purpleivan

This started out on Friday evening as a quick stab at making a mini rover, then the rover got bigger and finally had its own movie. BTW... the rover itself is total nonsense, not very stable in the bends, or quick, but it does have brake lights and turn signals on the rear, courtesy of Navlights and eyes on the front

Added a leaderboard in case anyone is interested in taking a crack at this.

Here's my second cinematic. I didn't start out to make it, just wanted to build a mini rover... which became bigger... then got its own video.

Part 3. Eve Early Test Flights Following on from their string of landing on the Kerbol systems smaller worlds, attention turned to a manned landing on the intriquing world of Eve. In order to undertake this kind of ambitious mission, the first step was to get more information on this strange world and to achieve this an unmanned probe was sent to the purple marble. After 195 days the plucky probe entered orbit around Eve, before entering its soupy atmosphere. Atmospheric readings during its decent and at its landing site, some 800m above sea level gave cause for concern, not for the probe's safety, as it had been well prepared, but for the difficulty of returning a lander from the surface through such a dense atmosphere. Atmospheric composition readings showed there to be no oxygen, so making use of jets to aid an ascent would not be an option. So they would have to do it the hard way... with lots of rocket power! With information from the Eve probe in their pocket, KSP engineers set about designing a vehicle that was capable of returning a crew from that purple surface. As the first step in getting back into orbit, is to get down to the surface in the first place, a proposed design for an Eve lander was placed in Kerbin orbit and then re-entered. It was during this part of the test that "letting the interns handle that part of the mission" proved to be a bad idea, when the vehicle deployed its parachutes and immediately broke up into several parts, each gently drifting to the ground, on its own chute. After this failure, the test was repeated with more of the "struts" that Kerbal engineers had come to admire the utility of. This test was a complete success in that the lander successfully made it to the surface of Kerbin in one piece, however its performance when lifting off from it, accounting for the more difficult conditions that would be encountered on Eve, was a different story. It just wasn't powerful enough. With this realisation the Eve lander design team set about the creation of a more advanced vehicle, this time giving the interns the critical role of "keeping the coffee coming". In Part 4. More testing plus a dummy landing on Eve.

From my Ion, ions everywhere challenge entry (a trip to Dres).

The main things I did were to put some shadows in there (soft edge shadows to match the cloudy conditions and uneven ground) strong shadowing/occlusion under the vehicle, made the "lit from above" lighting of the barrels stronger, tinted the sides very slightly towards the green/brown of the ground and the sky facing parts a little blue and tweaked the contrast/brightness a bit. Oh... and added some tracks behind the vehicle which was just some mud from another image cut to the right shape and roughly blended out at the edge.

One of mine

I took a quick crack at this based on your render in Photoshop this evening and this is what I have.

Many years without supplies, not dead.

A fleet of mini rovers I made for my winning Munar Landing Endeavour challenge entry. So... so... unstable

Leaving Kerbin orbit in an entry for the Lightest Rocket Escaping the Solar System challenge.

I'm submitting an entry in the challenge with a launch mass of 3.9 tons. The vehicle was stock with no part clipping and all flying done manually. I wasted a bit of mass (about 0.1t) by carrying a little too much oxidiser in the tank for the Rapier engine, which ended up being jettisoned with the tank when the liquid fuel in it ran out. BTW... the time from launch to achieving escape velocity was 49 minutes and it took 4h:40m to leave Kerbin SOI. - - - Updated - - - - - - Updated - - - Part clipping is when parts are placed so that they substantially intersect each other and doesn't require any mods, just rotating or translating parts into each other using the VAB GUI. Many challenges don't allow any serious part clipping, with only small intersection allowed. Some (e.g. the Jool 5 challenge) have a strict no part clipping rule. I'd say that the stack of Round-8's isn't really part clipping, as they are connected as intended by the developer. This apparent clipping seems like an error by Squad in positioning the attachment points for those tanks too close to the center of the height of the tank, so they intersect when stacked. However I'm curious how the engines are connected to the Round-8's in your design (i.e. how the fuel connection is made from the bottom Round-8 to the four engines).

KSP is by far the best value game I've ever bought. I paid 25 Euros for it last year and have logged over 1300 hours. Compare that with some other games I've played (fairly) recently. Wolfenstein: The New Order - £25 16 hours South Park: The Stick of Truth - £20 27 hours Sniper Elite 3 - £28 29 hours. I enjoyed all of these games and felt that they gave me decent enough value for money, but so far KSP has worked out at less than 2 euro cents per hour. I'm still putting in a decent number of hours per week on it, although more the occasional challenge and some artwork now, but I'm still firing it up for over 10 hours a week.

I just realised that I should set a date for the poll closing, so I'm picking 30th September for that.

Here are some of the images from the flight of the "Eve Party Boat" to Mun that I did to kick off my "Mun Rocked" challenge, landing a mass of 620 tons on the surface.

Part 2d. Giant Leaps Following its mission to near the center of the Kerbol system, the KSP's next mission would take its crew to the outermost planet in the system, Eeloo. Mere days after his return as pilot of the Moho mission, Yermin Kerman was to fly to the outer edge of the Kerbol system. Officially his response to this news was "Sure thing, strap me in". However unofficial sources say that he his reply was actually "What!... I just got back from Moho you $%"£!^& and you want to stuff me back in a ^&$%"^" can again... %&£* that. How about some RnR". Whatever the truth, come launch day both Yermin and Bob Kerman were at the controls of the vehicle bound for for Eeloo, tha lander of which they nicknamed "Lucky" after Bob's dog. This was a name that they would almost immediately regret when, just after the start of the burn out of Kerbin orbit, it was realised that some bozzo had connected the fuel lines backwards between the the Rockomax Jumbo-64 fuel tanks and the small FL-T200 tanks attached to the nuclear engines of their transfer vehicle. Transferring fuel manually to the small FL-T200 tanks, Yermin and Bob put the vehicle into a circular orbit of Kerbin and waited for the arrival of a replacement transfer vehicle. Once docked with their new ride to Eeloo, an improved transfer vehicle with more fuel, just in case it was required, they set off again for their icy destination. After a thankfully uneventful trip to Eeloo, Yermin and Bob detached the lander and descended to the surface, deciding not to test the vessels lights system, but instead to pick a nice safe daytime landing site, in case their lander's nickname decided to take a bite out them again. Once on the surface, even Yermin had to admit it was interesting to stand on the surface, look into the sky and know that all the other planets of their system were "roughly that way". After a bit more of his bar room philosophising, Yermin joined Bob in collecting samples, before heading back into orbit for a rendezvous with the transfer vehicle. After the longest "wait for the window" time in KSP history, the two travellers lit up the transfer vehicle's engines to begin their journey home. On arrival back in Kerbin SOI, one last snag was to hit their mission, when it was realised that even the additional fuel of their replacement transfer vehicle was not going to be enough to get them into low orbit. So the newly constructed orbital rescue vehicle was sent out to refuel their craft, allowing it to rendezvous with KOS. On disembarking to the station, one of it's crew decided to play a misguided prank on the much travelled Yermin and told him that he had to report immediately for a mission to Eve. The result being a rather predictable brawl, with the unfortunate KOS crewman ending up in medical for a week and Yermin removed from the crew roster for an extended "cooling off period". The flight of "Lucky" to Eeloo concluded the KSP's series of flights to the smaller planets of the system. In Part 3. Kerbals make preparations for a journey to the alluring purple planet of Eve.

Part 2c. Giant Leaps With their next mission, a trip to the inner system planet of Moho, the KSP made the radical choice or loading their vehicle with enough fuel to both get there and to return home again. This resulted in a much quicker although less eventful mission than their previous interplanetary missions. After a routine flight from Kerbin to Moho, the pilot Yermin Kerman put the Moho Express vehicle into a comfortable 20km orbit, while the engineer member of the crew, Rolley, prepared the lander for the descent. After a routine flight to the surface, Yermin commented that "we're making this flying to other planets thing look easy", a statement he would come to regret, when on his next mission, that would take him to Eeloo, a serious design flaw stranded the transfer vehicle in Kerbin orbit. After taking more time to collect surface samples and some observations of Kerbol, the lander made its way back into orbit to reunite with the Moho Express. They then waited for the desired launch window for the return to Kerbin. With the Moho Express' fuel reserves used up in the insertion burn into Kerbin orbit, the lander detached from it and rendezvoused with the KOS. In Part 2d. the KSP strikes out towards the last of the small planets, Eeloo.

OK... the poll closed a couple of days ago to choose which image I would work on and here is the final version of the poll winner "thinking of home" (1920x1200). 1080p version link is here. As I have lot of (in my opinion at least) interesting screenshots from my time with KSP, I'm now thinking of spending some time working on the more interesting ones, to improve on the shot taken in the game. Here's an example of the kind of changes to the images I would be making. Original Image Treated Image Some of the changes are quick and simple, brightness/contrast stuff, but cleaning up pixelated shadows and adding new details such as better clouds (unfortunately I took this pic before installing the various aesthetic add-ons I use now) takes a bit more time, so I won't be doing this kind of work for dozens of images. Below are some of the more interesting images that I have grabbed over the last year or so, that are my main candidates for giving the treatment (lots more on the drive where these came from). So my solution is to ask you which image you would most like to see an improved version of, in a poll, which will close on 30th September

I think I've seen on the threads somewhere, someone who did a Mun return mission on SRB's only.

I finally got around to flying the Eve Party Boat to Mun and making a landing. It was a mishap strewn mission, but resulted in putting a 620 ton (mass at landing) vehicle on the Mun surface. Here are the pics of the flight, plus some of the many other launches required to fuel and crew it. I wasted a lot of fuel burning the regular liquid engines rather than the more fuel efficient nukes, as half the nukes had missing fuel lines (I'd hastily constructed these rather than finding the files for the originals I used for the trip to Eve), so they were a bit of a pain to use, plus I started from too low a Kerbin orbit to use them successfully. So... anyone want to try outdoing 620 tons? As a bit of extra amusement, here's what happens when the launch of that monstrosity doesn't go according to plan.

Nice images... I'm curious what aesthetic mods you use in case I'm missing something nice.

Part 2b. Giant Leaps The next destination that the KSP set its sights on, was Dres. A rather dreary looking little world could be seen through Kerbins telescopes, but it was chosen regardless. A daytime launch from KSC in glorious sunshine was the perfect start to what was to become a chaotic mission, due to its use of the new AGU grabber unit as the core of the program's new transfer vehicle configuration; Propulsion Utilising Linear Linkage (PULL). This placed the transfer vehicle in front of the lander, which was dragged it to its destination. This was found it to be a seriously flawed design and after a troublesome flight to Dres was abandoned before the insertion burn into Dres orbit, in favour of launching a supply vessel to meet with the lander and refuel it, before its descent to the surface. Once refueled the lander made its way down to the surface in a mostly uneventful journey, except for a brief moment of panic when it appeared that it was approaching the surface at too high a speed, however the engines at full thrust averted disaster at the last second. On the surface the crew of Bill and Erlin Kerman examined the surface and took samples for further analysis. Erlin, a keen runner, also tested it's potential as the location of an extreme marathon race. He believed its grey solitude would be the perfect place for the more philosophical runner to consider there place in the universe. However the low gravity and dusty surface, made for poor running conditions, so the idea was quietly shelved. With science and fun and games over with, the lander made its way back into orbit, for a reunion with the supply ship to top up with fuel before the trip back to Kerbin. On its return the capsule streaked across the the dawn skies of Kerbin's the southern oceans, before drifting gently to a touchdown on land. In Part 2c. the KSP heads for sunny Moho.

Well I've put the it in orbit and docked the two transfer vehicles that will push the Eve Party Boat to Mun and filled the lander itself with fuel, which took 6 launches on its own. Now it's ready to head for (hopefully) a safe landing on Mun.

I've now made all the text larger by one font size. Hope that's better for you.

With successful flights to the Mun, Minmus and a growing space station in Kerbin orbit, attention turned to more distant destinations... the planets. Part 2a. Giant Leaps The first planet that the kerbals took aim at was Duna. That red dot in the sky had always fascinated them and ground based telescope showed it to have an atmosphere that was dense enough to make a landing easier, but not so much that it would hinder an ascent from the surface. The Duna Explorer lander and transfer vehicles were dispatched to the KOS (Kerbin Orbital Station) on separate launchers and rendezvoused there to be filled with fuel then docked together, before embarking on a kerbal's longest spaceflight to date. After a journey of 270 days the Duna Explorer arrived at the red planet, only to discover that too much fuel had been consumed entering orbit for them to return to Kerbin. The solution to this was to launcher another transfer vehicle to Duna, which would provide sufficient fuel for both the landing and the trip home. After undocking from the first, now empty, transfer vehicle, the lander Duna XL rendezvoused with its replacement, which was fat with precious fuel. Once refueled, Duna XL undocked and headed for the surface. After a parachute assisted landing and the dust clearing from their powered descent, the crew of Duna XL, Herman and Bob Kerman, looked out over the surface of this strange red world through the navigation window of their Mk1 Lander Can. Once all systems had been checked and made safe in case of the need for an emergency lift off, the crew exited the lander and descended to the surface, where they planted their space program's flag in the ochre coloured dust of Duna. Once scientific observations had been made and samples of the surface dust and rocks collected, Herman and Bob returned to the Duna XL and made a rapid ascent to rejoin its transfer vehicle in orbit. Once docked, the crew hunkered down until it was time to light up the engines of the transfer vehicle for the return flight to Kerbin. After the burn was complete, the crew took their last pictures from the navigation window, of the red world they were leaving behind. To enter Kerbin orbit, the Duna XL detached from its transfer vehicle before making its insertion burn, eventually rendezvousing again with KOS after its long journey, before returning to the surface to reunite with friends, colleagues and family. In Part 2b. The kerbals head for Dres.