TiktaalikDreaming

Now I'm going to have to listen to both Lucia Di Lammermoor and Queen's Flash Gordon soundtrack.

Anyone concerned about the placeholder textures can look at this instead. First part with an actual texture. That's not in KSP yet, so the render has reflections etc, and it's not done yet either. And, I just noticed my little mini rods have sharp edges instead of rounding.

Um, you're right. I thought I did. derp. If there's any mods watching, can this be moved to add-on development? Definitely not add-on releases

I'll be aiming at a vaguely stock-like look, albeit with very non-stock-like shapes.

The textures are literally semi-random metal textures applied all over the parts. There's zero effort in them just yet.

Well, sometimes you just want to cheat. And, I know there's a cheat menu hiding in the Alt F12 menus, but, it's just not as satisfying as a truly ludicrous set of science fantasy drives. So, I'm working on a collection of parts to make truly absurd craft. These won't be exotic ideas from physicists. There's already mods for salt water reactors and project Orion drives and Alcubierre drives. I'm talking Star trek grade technobabble stuff. Engines that run of Handwavium and electricity from Eludium reactors. I've got some other mods to work on, so I'd like to know how much interest there is in this sort of thing. I'll be honest and say I first created a very early version of this ages back to test other mods on other planets when I didn't want to just hyperedit myself there. So, I'm unclear how many people might find a use. So far I'm working on three grades of engine. Planetary (a few G, deep throttling, short and fat to help with landing leg placement), interplanetary (maybe ten to twenty times the thrust, long and a bit cooler looking), and interstellar (doesn't work yet, but will hopefully be some sort of warp thing). The planetary and interplanetary engines will work from Handwavium, which can just be a stored amount, or converted in a reactor from Taurusfecallium. Everything uses a lot of electricity, so there's a reactor that used Eludium and Phlebotium. The warp drives I'm hoping to make work using Energized Di-Francium-Tri-Absurdium Crystal. Apart from the word Francium (it's under lithium on the periodic table, a fairly long way under) those are all as meaningful as the others. I couldn't really fit a crystal structure name in to take the liquid out of "di-"lithium as a crystal. No, I'm not serious. Yes, I am serious about releasing this for download. In fact, here it is: http://spacedock.info/mod/1137/Space Opera (Licensed as CC BY-SA 4.0, aka, steal it but don't pretend it's yours) And some pics of the parts (engines, and warp core not textured yet, and there's also some RCS that works on Handwavium, but it's VERY early days and may change dramatically); Inter-planetary Engine Planetary Engine Reactor and Eludium Containment and Warp Core (WIP) Handwavium Tank Handwavium Generator and Phlebotium Tanks And and Taurusfecalium Kontainment Unit Warp Drive Polarity Field Generator Quantum Entangler

I'm doing up a Science Fantasy/Space Opera type mod (see http://imgur.com/gallery/OjtI1 there's no forum post yet, very early days) with engines for ludicrous speed, and maybe even plaid. And I'm looking for an existing module I can use for warp engines. Mostly because my knowledge of C# starts and ends with how to type the name of the language. So, before asking silly things like how to arrange animations and so on, I'm gonna ask if that's OK. Ie; Are you OK with me pillaging the module and making new parts. I'd obviously be adhering to the license etc etc, but I want to make sure you're actually OK with it as well (license terms are a bit locked in, so it's possible to not be happy with re-use, although the license says you are).

That's because I use 36 face cones instead of 24. I find it much easier to work with. It leads to weird overlappings from time to time. I just decided I can live with that.

I can't disagree. Outside of the "should I pack these mods using 7z or zip?" question, yes, all Windows users should download and install 7zip. When setting up a Windows PC (I don't do that professionally anymore, I just kill my PCs frequently) it's usually the first install after an AV. When not publishing KSP mods, obviously the choices are different. But the fact remains it's saturation in user-space isn't 100% And I'm still not sure if CKAN will handle it. (it is open source, so I should be able to just look, but was kinda hoping someone knew). And, now that it's clear I can use LZMA compression in a zip file AND Windows seems to handle it just fine, I'm OK using the zip file format with 7z's compression.

Yep. As has been mentioned, much better to stick with .zip, as the file format is much more supported. However, both .zip and .7z support different compression methods, and I should be able to utilize those without annoying anyone much.

Cattle class to space! BYO squeeze food tubes. And brown pants.

And, because I've had a few questions about it, I realise I never posted my plan for which parts I'd do. So I've added that to the OP for the WIP topic. So yes, I will be doing a command pod for 3.75m-to-5m AND for 5m-to-6.25m etc etc. Ditto for all the other parts. What's not mentioned is I think I'm going to want to add some double height cargo modules. Because my land rover doesn't have enough space. Can't have that. :-)

I have but I'm not sure they belong here. As I'm intending quite a few IVAs by the end of this, just about everything is a prop, rather than a part of the interior mesh. So, I keep making these things that'd be nice KIS bits. AND, although I thought the props would be a bit tedious, they're awesome little micro projects. I've really enjoyed making them. So, I may make a sub-mod for KIS/KAS bits when I figure out things I actually want. :-) The 3.75m-to-5m crew/command pod is absolutely on my to-do list. Everything in the 2.5m-to-3.75m size will have a matching version in the larger sizes. And I haven't really finished all the options I wanted for the 2.5m-to-3.75m as well. EG: I keep meaning to make an Ore storage unit. A reactor. etc etc. Antennae. I was kinda hoping the larger stock antennae would fit in the science bay, but the damned things don't. So, I probably will add one that's a bit smaller than the large stock dishes, but larger than the "built-in" antenna. It'll be just an extra part though, not integrated into anything. I'm a bit dubious about extending the science options when there's already so many good mods doing that. Although, like with the antenna, I might (OK, probably will) do a few variants of stock science parts that are bashed around a bit to fit in the science bays. The Size 3 to 4 science lab's bay is bigger. Gotta see what that'll hold yet. :-) To check out what I'm intending, the spacedock page has the list. I should pop it on the topics as well. After reviewing and editing, and probably adding explanations.

Well, your distro already has a binary that will handle it. It's not in the kernel. I tend to use lbzip in Linux, but that's due to it's multi-core capability. But yeah, most non-windows zip things just work it out. OK, yeah. It does look like if I use 7zip a bit differently I can mess with compression types. And, bonus, windows even opens the resulting zip file.

And, just after an upload is THE BEST time to fix an issue. I have a fix for the science lab never using it's stored science. It will be included next time, but I just had my indexes wrong, because I didn't even notice there were indexes. Was 0, should be 4. MODULE { name = ModuleScienceLab containerModuleIndex = 4 K, I may have got in early enough. I've re-updated to include the science lab pointing to science container fix. Looks like 8 early adopters between updates. Sorry guys. :-(

I do believe this shall fix me a problem. Thanky muchly. I never even saw containerModuleIndex. I should know to just search all the configs for "Index".

I've updated again. 1.0.2. No major significant changes to anything, but I wanted to get the decouplers out there, seeing as there aren't any stock 5m ones. Also included is a WIP 3.75m-to-5m lab. That is a part where I can't make the promise not to break saved craft if you use it. Hopefully wrapping it in a "Work in Progress" image helps to make that clear. :-) Apart from that there's just a teeny bit more of the slow march towards finished IVAs.

Fair call.

I considered it, but I try to aim for maximum compatibility. So if I have to choose between a bit of extra work/parts and having a module dependency, I usually choose to not have the dependency. If it's not essential (eg colour changes that don't go with fuel/resource changes) then I include things as options using module manager.

The more I look (like a code search across .netkan), the more I see I'd be going it alone. I probably don't want to be the only mod author using (and thus explaining to users) 7z. For the moment I guess I should stick with þe olde zip format. Compatibility is paramount IMHO. It'd be nice to use 7z, and I couldn't remember why. But, yeah, no-one is, so... (Dammit Microsoft, zip has a beard so long it frequently trips over it.)

I've been making mods as zip files for a while now, and I seem to recall there was some requirement that the mods be packaged as a zip. But recently I noticed that I get almost half the file size if I switch to 7Z format. And, now that I look for some sign of "why am I using .zip?" I can't find it. I'd love to save everyone (well, 70-odd people plus spacedock) some bandwidth by switching to 7z, but I'm a bit hesitant due to half remembering some reason not to use it. And not knowing how CKAN deals with it. If CKAN can't unpack 7z, then it's out as far as I'm concerned.

And a test flight confirms the function of both decouplers; Me thinks the cage type decoupler would be handy at 3.75m as well.

I've been working on some decouplers. I'll be doing two types. One will be the classic KSP short decoupler that's basically like the Size 3 decoupler, but a tad shorter. The other was because I was messing around decided it'd be handy. It's a cage type interstage like the Russians used. It has the advantage that you can then add surface attached engines on the aft of your pod, and then a separator that's attached to the bottom node. I still need to test the collider set-up for this. Non-concave colliders and all that. So there may end up being a minimum safe distance from the edge to put engines etc. But, it should look a bit like

...and there was cheering... Thanks. Although all I'm doing is tagging the "yeah, this still works in 1.2.2" :-)

And it must be almost wake up time in Europe. There's a 1.2.2 release that seems to have been sprung on the community. Speaking of which, is there a low grade admin type role you could assign to a few trusted people who could then update things like that? I'd be happy to take on some small tasks like that for spacedock. I'm out of my depth at web-hosting, database things, and so one, but I can modify a table usually without making things crash. My knowledge of webservers and html is from a decade or more ago, and I only really know perl and bash as scripting languages, I also don't have huge amounts of time, but I recognize that very few people do, and the more that contribute, the less of that time resource everyone needs to contribute. Was that the most tentative offer of assistance ever? :-)