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AlphaMensae

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  1. AlphaMensae
    I'm in the final stage of v2.1 dev work, yee hah!! I just did a huge update on AlphaDev, revised most of the .cfg file and a few of the .mu files to have B9 UI groups and some other features, and did a clean-up pass. All launch stands and bases can now have the clamp staging disabled if desired, as I learned how to do it. Great for using milkstools or launch rails on a launch base or plate, as now the base/plate's staging icon can now be disabled to prevent confusion. The General Flat Vert Bolt Hold-Down now has a tall option for the bolt to provide extra reach for rockets with lots of side boosters, similar to the Thor/Delta launch stand. This was just an interim quick job until I remake all the General Bases parts. I also did the first part of the Soyuz Base v2.1 update, cleaning up and reworking the large fuel arm. The small fuel arm and gantry will be the last part. I also added a General Mounting Platform; it's an alternate form of the Mini Frame Flat Launch Base with a solid deck, side attach nodes, standard KSP deck attach nodes and toggleable railing. It also has 25m extensions below the foot pads so it will still connect with the ground when the platform is used on uneven terrain. This platform was a suggestion from the KIS/KAS users for colony/base structures. Note that the platform is not in the MLP custom categories (stock and CCK), but a single part in the structural category; it also has a different name style than the rest of the MLP parts, so it is not affected by hide parts patch. The last thing to do will be to add a yellow general umbilical color and alternate colors for the General Launch Stand clamp arms, something I passed over to get to other things.
  2. AlphaMensae
    Not yet, but you can use the screenshots and demo clips on my youtube channel as a reference. Or use pics/video of the real Soyuz, my version of the launch pad goes together mostly like the real one does. Don't use that for RO anymore, as RO now has support for Modular Launch Pads built-in. Of course, I think that is for the v2.0x release, v2.1 is a whole different story, unless RO simply adjusts all parts with "AM_MLP*" as a name at once, in which case v2.1 will be supported as well. That old patch has been removed for v2.1 in any case.
  3. AlphaMensae
    To expand on the answers given, when the Atlas was first being designed in the early to mid-'50s, it was not known if a rocket engine could even be started in space. So to make sure all the engines would operate, they were all started on the ground, then the outer 2 booster engines would be dropped off at some point, leaving just the running sustainer. This is known as "stage and a half" operation. Later on it was figured out that a rocket engine could be started in space, especially if it used hypergolic fuels...and thus was born the AJ10, which was used in the upper stage of Vangaurd, later spun off as the Able upper stage. But of course, by then it was far too late to change Atlas, so it stayed with its stage-and-a-half style.
  4. AlphaMensae
    Finished the Small General Swing Arm rework, which sets the template for the other sizes. New PAW for those arms:
  5. AlphaMensae
    I keep forgetting about some details..... The Rodan Crew Arm now has a full 180° retraction, which can be adjusted with a deploy limit slider like the General Crew Arms....set it to whatever you want. And in a lightbulb moment, I think I figured out how to do the dual crew arm retract directions and different tower size mounts without having to duplicate the arm meshes.
  6. AlphaMensae
    The Rodan Crew Arm has now been reworked as well, adding B9PS UI Groups and one extra length variant like the other crew arms. It's now on the AlphaDev branch Using transform moving has allowed me to remove uneeded duplicate meshes, so the net result is that the .mu files got a lot smaller, despite adding extra length variants. I'm now reworking the General Swing Arms, finally going to make the PAW sensible and understandable with a bunch if UI groups. Also was able to remove the duplicate side umbilicals for the left side of the arm needed for the alternate (to the right) swing direction by using B9's transform rotate and move functions. I had already done that in Unity, by moving and rotating the individual meshes. Now I just do that for a single parent gameobject in the .cfg, and poof! - the .mu size gets much smaller.
  7. AlphaMensae
    Forgot to add that I also removed all the old general crew arms from AlphaDev, the previously split ones each in a different style, which I think i had hidden already. Now there is just the Large and Small General Crew Arms, two of each in different mount sizes. The side-hinged retraction method requires a whole new arm with a different pivot position, so I split those into separate parts.
  8. AlphaMensae
    Big update for v2.1 posted to AlphaDev! I reworked (as I call it when I just reassemble how the parts are done in Unity) the General Crew Elevators (Large, Small and Mini), the General Crew Arms (Large and Small) and the General Fallback Towers (Large, Small and Mini), plus put in proper node-moving for Mercury-Atlas Walkway when the mount type is switched. The .cfgs for all of them have had B9PS UI groups added to clarify what the deploy limit sliders do The Large and Small elevator towers now have a base section (2 for the Large, 70m and 130m car heghts) with a single elevator car max height and a single tower section with multiple heights; the tops and the Large Extension remain unchanged. The Mini elevator is now just a multi-height core section and an extra tower section. The Small General Crew Arm has had extra length variants added. All the strongbacks have had extra height variants added, and the umbicals now can be vertically adjusted separately from the clamp. Some screenshots from the VAB showing what the new PAWs look like (Small and Mini Fallback Towers are functionally the same):
  9. AlphaMensae
    And was this done by CKAN or manually? CKAN may not get all the dependencies, as some aren't officially stated for KSP 1.10.x. All are included in the download though. In the download .zip, there's a GameData folder. Copy (or extract first) the folders inside that GameData folder into your KSP GameData folder, alongside the Squad one. There can be only one GameData folder, so don't just dump the whole .zip (or the .zip itself) into your KSP GameData.
  10. AlphaMensae
    It's funny how my my dev cycle has become like Bluedog Design Bureau's, with each major update taking a year or more to do. I don't want to do partially-done releases, as v2.1 updates and reworks most of the original v2.0, so much so that I do not want to officially release it half-done, then do a bunch of successive updates. That's whay I redid the AlphaDev branch on the GitHub to be like BDB's development branch, it's a complete WIP version of the next release for early users to try out.
  11. AlphaMensae
    The Tundra SLC-41 is actually the current version as used by Atlas V, and not the old Titan III/IV one, that's why. May have to use another static. The Titan III/IV fixed tower wasn't on the mobile launch platform, but on the pad itself; the mast was on the platform, fitted up against (or so) the tower.
  12. AlphaMensae
    I made the Hammerhead crane's rotation an animation, just 90° though. I did add it as an exception to the Modify_Animated_Attachment.cfg so it gets the AA module. I don't know about the Starship tower, right now I don't have any particular desire to make it.
  13. AlphaMensae
    The v2.1 dev branch is for those who want an early look at it, and also for testing, since I can overlook simple things due to the complexity of the parts. The official release is still not exactly known, but I am in the final phase where I'm going over the General Pads parts (since they were done first) and upgrading them with UI grorups, transform movinh and other advanced B9PS features I had been reluctant to use before. I also work a full-time job now, so I have much less time on weekdays to do dev work. But I think within 30 days or so it should be ready.
  14. AlphaMensae
    Ah, no, that makes them too complicated and restrictive for general use. I already took the integrated arms out of the Soyuz Launch Base for those reasons. The General Fallback Towers are part of the "modular" philosophy, and so can be used with the launch bases and plates. There is a new Falcon 9-style launch plate in v2.1, wide enough to accommodate the full-width Large Fallback tower.
  15. AlphaMensae
    There's already two of them, Large and Small, in the current release, and v2.1 adds a new mini size one. All three have multiple height variants as well.
  16. AlphaMensae
    If this is the v2.1 AlphaDev build, then there is a patch that removes Animated Attachment from all MLP parts except the new launch rails. I could add more exceptions, like for the crane.
  17. AlphaMensae
    Actually, I overthinked it again, and there isn't any need to have separate versions of the elevator base parts, just one is needed, with a single-height elevator car. It can be moved down with the deploy limit slider to get within any launch pad height limits. I will add a separate Large Elevator Base though, with an optimized 120m (or maybe higher) high car, so the regular one (65m or so) isn't too fast or slow.
  18. AlphaMensae
    I had thought it was how far away from the part's collider(s) that determined whether a Kerbal could activate something, but now it looks like it's the part's origin that has to be within range. Yep, an unfortunate KDP-ism. And speaking of the elevators, I have to rethink how they are set up. Having multiple elevator car height settings works fine in Sandbox, but they can create havoc in Career mode with the tier 1 and 2 launch pads. I then set up the cars so they all start at the bottom of the elevator tower, and use B9PS to move them (actually a parent gameobject that holds the car as a child, which is the thing that gets animated) up when turned on. That did work with the pad height limits....unless you moved the deploy limit slider down, which also moves the disabled cars down as well (being all in the same animation), and since those are still at the bottom, the got moved below the VAB floor and actually increased the tower's height. There's no way to get around this. Putting each car height into a different animation would be cumbersome and confusing to use ("uh, which elevator did I turn on again?"). So I'm going to make the Large, Small and Mini General Elevator tower bases in 2 separate versions (maybe 3 for the Large), each with only one car max height appropriate for the targeted launch pad tier, and identified as such in the part's title. The single-piece elevator towers will have just one height. The single height setting will eliminate the variable car speeds thata happen with the multiple height settings.
  19. AlphaMensae
    The only thing I can think of now is if that a Kerbal on EVA is too far from a part's origin, then it can't activate an animation on that part. The elevators are tall and the origin is at the very bottom, so after going up, the origin is far out of range.
  20. AlphaMensae
    Ok, the re-re-revision of the General Modular Service Towers is done. This will break craft files, as some of the older parts have been removed. I went through several ideas, and this is the end result: For all 4 tower sizes (Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large), the old 10m Core section and Base section have been combined into a new Tower Core part. The base can be toggled off so additional 10m cores can be stacked. This new part retains the part name of the old base part for each tower. For the Small, Medium and Large sizes, the old short section is now has 3 height variants (2.5m, 5.0m, 7.5m). This part still has the same part name. These sizes also got a different default color: Small Tower is Light Gray, Medium Tower is Medium Gray, and Large Tower is Gray-Green. The Extra-Large Tower short section stays the same (it's just too detailed to have more than one copy in a .mu, makes the file really big). The side panels for both the core and section parts have been revised to match that of the Titan III/IV tower progression; now they are split front-and-back, so you can have side panels off, just the front-side ones on, or all on. Also added more options for the tower front panels. The Top part for each tower stays the same, aside from the default color changes.
  21. AlphaMensae
    Yeah, you have either RO and/or that outdated basic patch of mine making the MLP parts bigger and BDB, but I don't think the BDB Saturn has RO support yet, which is why it's still the default BDB size. Unless there are direct .cfgs for non-RO part mods, RO is best used with the official RO part mods. This is outside my responsibility, as I only support stock scale. Using MLP with RO is "at your own risk" or "do it youtself".
  22. AlphaMensae
    Yes, but that doesn't have any use for me, as I don't have any parts like the one specific case he made the module for. And doesn't allow animations to be staged, which is why I use Animated Decouplers.
  23. AlphaMensae
    If you have the latest RO and that outdated basic RO patch from the Extras folders installed, then you would have two things trying to rescale the MLP parts and causing problems. BDB does have some RO configs for it now, but SOCK doesn't.
  24. AlphaMensae
    RO now has direct support for Modular Launch Pads, so that simple patch is no longer needed, and has already been removed from the v2.1 dev build. All the youtube videos I've made were done at stock scale, with the regular BDB parts. The Saturn V and Saturn IB though were rescaled up a bit with the patch included in BDB's Extras, it makes them properly-sized with the other BDB parts (eg. 6.4m wide S-IC and S-II).
  25. AlphaMensae
    Glad to see it was something else
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