purpleivan

Some pics I grabbed from my mission to take some colonists to Laythe, all of whom will soon be featuring in a story series.

Thanks @monstah

I started a support thread in Technical Support (PC, modded installs) but it should be in the unmodded installs support section. The reason for that is the problem affects the stock male kerbal model (incorrect normals on the arms), I just noticed it first in a modded install, but the problem affects unmodded installs as well.

This isn't an entry, but I did this for an earlier, similar challenge. 18 little party people. One of them seems to have had a bit too much of the party juice though.

I'll be buying the new releases the day they comes out, but will most likely just have a fairly quick look at it, then return to my 1.3.1 build and wait for mods to catch up. I could start a career game day one, and play through to complete the tech tree, something I've done for all previous versions. However I still like my pretties (Scatterer etc.) while scratching for a buck or two, so probably 1.3.1 for me for a little while at least.

I build rockets, but don't build any of the the machines listed under fun. Instead I make wierd bits and pieces, mainly sets for fan art. I think that 2nd question could do with a few more options.

I made a post yesterday to the KSP Discussion thread regarding issues that I've found with the normals of the male character model. Specifically the arms, most noteably the hands. This is the post I made to the Discussion thread, with the full details. To explain the issues, here's an image of a coloured lighting rig setup I made to demostrate the problem. Green light from the right of the screen, red from the left and blue the top. The normals on the arms of the female model are fine, but the ones that the male model has are very wrong, especially on the hands. Something I've noticed in a lot of the screenshots that I've photoshopped to make wallpaper images etc. from, is that I'd have to adjust the lighting of the hands, but until yesterday I didn't realise how big an issue with the lighting of the characters there was. I checked earlier versions (1.2 and 1.0.4) and the problem existed then too. I'm currently running KSP v1.3.1 with a number of plugins, but I've tried this out in a clean install as well, with the same issue being present.

Ok... I've done some more detailed testing of the lighting, with a surprising result. Plucky scientist Katdorf Kerman put on the white suit and helped out with this. First I put her on a rig with red, green and blue lighting from different directions, to see what's happening with the normals (ignore the colouring on the light objects, they're recieving the light from to opposite lamp). This looks fine, so I was a little confused, as I expected to see inconsistent lighting on the hands. So brave Katdorf left for Laythe via the power of Hyperedit, to join the band of colonists there. I lined her up next to Jeb, he's on the left, she's on the right So this new wanderer from kerbin has correct lighting, but old Jeb doesn't... wierd. How about I set up two exisiting colonists as well, 1 male and 1 female, in the same white suit texture (dudes on the left of the picture). Hmmm.. so it seems that the male suit model has problems with its normals but the female one doesn't. Now for one final head to head test... male vs female under the coloured lighting rig, with Katdorf (left) and her colleague Franklin (right). If you look at the female model on the left, the lighting colour is consistent, with light from right of the screen being green, the left red and top blue. However the male model looks a bit of a mess in the hand area. In fact the arms as a whole have issues, but they're more noticeable on the hands. Now that I've got these results I'll submit a bug report.

I've been playing around with some texture alterations today, as some preparation for a story series I'm planning to work on and I found something odd about the lighting of the kerbal characters. The issue is that the gloves don't appear to be lit correctly, as if ther normals in that part of the mesh are incorrect. Here's an image to show what I mean, which has a character with a pure white colour texure, all detail coming from the normal map. If you look at the character's left hand, which is facing the sun, it appears darker on the sun side (back) than the shadowed side (the palm). in fact it has the same colour value as the shadowed side of the right arm, which recieves no direct light. Most likely it's been there for a long time and I've just got used to it and mentally filtered it out. It was only because I was tinking with the textures that it caught my eye. My first reaction was that I'd screwed up something in making my changes, but I confirmed this wasn't the case, by first removing all the none stock textures. This gave the same result (dark back of the hands), so not an error I'd introduced. I then checked this on different planets (didn't make any sense, but did it just in case) and found the result was the same, the hands were lit wrong. I also had a look at this in v1.2 and the results was again the same, dark back of the hands. I even dug out the oldest build I have around (1.0.4) and still the hands were wrong. After playing the game for so long and doing a lot of art work based on screenshots, I'm a bit shocked that I've not noticed this before.

Given enough thrust you can launch just about anything in KSP, regardless of the aerodynamics. I put this (something I built for a much older version of the game) into orbit yesterday.

Took the Eve Party Boat to see if the ol' gal has still got it. I'm pleased to report she still has, as the ship designed for a four man Eve return mission in v0.24.2 made Kerbin orbit in v1.3.1. Even with the aerodynamics of a brick, it still managed to power to orbit. BTW... the partthat made orbit (the Eve lander) was only 1/3 fuelled at takeoff. In the original mission it was refuelled by a small fleet of tankers. This time around she was left in an orbit as a monument to the "drag, what's drag" era of astronautics.

I have the latest version of Scatterer (0.0324) and it appears to have sorting issues with Laythe and Jool. Looking at the release notes, there seemed to be an issue with this that was fixed back in v0.0234 (Fixed draw order issue where clouds on Jool render over Laythe's sky.) I gave the past couple of months in the thread to see if this was a known issues, but didn't see any posts related to it. I'm running KSP 1.3.1 with SVE (v1.2.8.0) and EVE (v1.2.2.1) addons. If there's any other useful infomation I can provide let me know. I've got a bunch of brave adventurers headed for Laythe to set up a colony, but now they're all crying they won't be able to send pretty Jool rise pictures to the folks back home.

Sent up a fuelling ship last night (5 orange tanks) to fill up my Laythe colony mining vehicle, ready for its departure. After the transfer the refuller had pretty much only fumes left onboard and I planned to use that to re-enter it and consign it to the great waste bin of the skies. Unfortunately a few seconds after undocking, instead of hitting T to turn on SAS, I hit Z, slamming the now very light vehicle full tilt into the side of the fully fuelled mining ship. With the inevitable explosive consequences of course.

Might be worth asking about this in the thread for the mod, if you've not done that already, although there's not been much activity there recently.

I'm curious why there seems to be different attitude towardfs the game on PC and console when it comes to the F12 menu. On these forums the PC debug menu is often referred to. Phrases such as "just F12 it" (e.g. to fix a wonky contract that just won't complete) are frequently made. It's also referred to when it comes to testing and even challenges, such as "2G SSTO to Orbit" making use of to add a level of difficulty. So why should the console version be any different, regardless of what has at some point in time been said by the devs? BTW... this is coming from someone in the same business, so I do understand that there are situations when you don't want debug info/input being publicly discussed. I'm just unclear why the greater need for secrecy about it on console.

Judging by my screenshots collection, sometime shortly before July 25th 2014. My first pic is of a satellite in Mun orbit, so I'd guess July 22/23rd.

I took Jeb out in a micro plane for tour to the runway island this afternoon. A fine machine, if a little unstable, especially on takeoff Phew... in the air at last. Buzzing the monolith Runway island dead ahead. Don't think this will quite make it to the Mun, so better head back to the KSC Jeb. Watch out for the tower. Put the kettle on, he's almost home. This was not in the flight plan.

I installed the addon last night and I'm having a few problems, most likely due to me overlooking something. What I'm trying to do. Change the music played in the Construction scene. Add a new playlist that plays music when I go to the launchpad and play that music from then on (I'll refine this to be more limited later). What I've done. Replaced the music listed in the existing playlist "Construction" but made no changes to the settings for that playlist. Created a new playlist called "Launching (new)" which includes a single music file and has the settings in the image below. No change to any other playlists were made. The problem. The music in the new playlist "Launching (new)" doesn't play on the launchpad or after launch. The new music for the scene Constrution plays fine, but it continues to play when I go to the Space Center scene. What I'm running. Soundtrack Editor 4.4 KSP 1.3.1 I've tried setting the new playlist to use various "Sort this before" values (Construction, itself, Pre-launch Day) with no difference in behaviour. I also confirmed the music plays in-game by selecting it to be played in the Construction scene and there it played fine. If anyone has any suggestions they'd be appreciated. An update... I took a micro plane out for a flight and found that the new playlist kicks in at some random time/altitude around 30 seconds after firing up the engine or 200 - 400m ASL.

I like that the show at least takes a nod towards realism, and overall I've found it very entertaining, but that gravity assist course course had me cringing. The speed of it was completely ridiculous.

I don't have any specific movie suggestions that would be new to this list, but here's some of my pet peeves. Numbers are for nerds - the use of ridiculously small (almost always, but occasionally large) numbers, especially for distances, speeds and financial costs. Training, what training - scientists and astronauts that act like 10 year olds on a suger buzz, rather than highly trained, responsible individuals, operating in dangerous environments using incredibly expensive hardware. Don't give HAL the wheel - the onboard computer can converse with the crew and carry out complex analysis of data, but the spacecraft is flown by some sack of giblets punching buttons and manouvering with a stick. Hands on experience - no matter how technologically advanced, no weaponry bigger than you can carry seems to exist. No missiles, tanks, aircraft etc. Just guys shooting at each other with ray guns.

If Jeb's lucky... safe return wise.

If you've not done it yet, then a manned Eve return is something to go for. Looking at my old screenshots, it's about that time in my game that I took a crack at it.

Hi truthseekers. It's been a while since I got anyfin from the guy with the special antenna, but hes come thru now. I was getting worried... thought the peeps with the power had got him, so I went his house to find out. He wouldn let me in, he just said he cudn talk, cos a purple unicorn was asking him how to get to Kathmandu. I guess that was code for sumfin. The next day he sends me a pic wiv one of them aliens on it. Said he had to talk to that unicorn to get his brain to see the real picture. He said he cant use his special antenna any more, cos he took it to the store when it was raining and all the gum wrappers fell off. BELIEVE

I got around to this a little quicker than I anticipated.

Have a look for posts by @Overland he's made a lot of trains. Like this.