orcmaul

A quick read of the release notes suggests that previously the stack nodes were not sign sensitive. So previously 1 and -1 for node orientation were equivalent and the game was ok with parts being attached upside down (relative to the node). If I'm correct about that then the fix should be to change the sign on the affected nodes and see if the problem is resolved. I'm still in the early stages of testing 1.0 (alright, I'm playing KSP) and setting up a development environment for 1.0. I'm still working through learning a lot of the changes so I understand what's supposed to happen when I'm testing BoxSat. In other words, flying airplanes is fun, wheee! Now for some thoughts regarding the new features. I'm going to see if I can get the frame to be an enclosure for the modules, hopefully that'll work. I'm planning on making the solar panels not retract once extended like the stock solar panels now behave. The Oscar B and Round 8 now hold more fuel so I need to decide if the BoxSat LFO module will also need to hold more. BoxSat is not intended to survive atmospheric entry on its own so my initial intention is to set the Max Temperature to 1200. I'm planning to see if I can make the hatch do that transparency thing in the editor so you can check the contents without pulling the hatch. Let me know how you feel about these specific changes. I'm going to hold off on discussing new parts until after I've released a working version for KSP 1.0.

My first tests show that BoxSat is broken in 1.0. Looks like there's been a change to stack nodes that we'll need to resolve for BoxSat. I'm still trying out 1.0 for myself right now so I can't say when a fixed and updated BoxSat will be ready.

Perfect. Thank you for posting this. I love the blueprints from your mission reports series.

Hmm... I'll give this some thought. With RT you can rename your craft through the RT interface. Are there any other mods that allow you to rename vehicles? We also have the hatch that jettisons if you're a big fan of space debris.

Hello the hawk, I'm not expecting KSP 1.0 to break anything for us I do plan to release an update after testing it with 1.0. The big change will probably be a bit of folder renaming and updating the MM files so that the install will be easier. I think we have a new texture for the LFO engine but I still have some comparison testing to do to see if we've resolved a texture mapping issue. It looks like I also need to make some new screenshots to show how the payload frame works.

In addition to the log file that MeCripp mentioned it would also be handy to see your persistent file.

The battery module was well within the poly budget we used for all of our models. I'd have to have DasPenguin get me exact numbers but I'm pretty sure the battery module has a lower poly count than several other parts in our mod. My experience has been that draw calls count for a lot more than straight up poly count. The battery module is a single model and therefore only one material so it should be only one draw call. Now it does have an emissive but so do several other parts so if the other parts are fine then I'm still left scratching my head. I've downloaded BoxSat from both Curse and KerbalStuff, built ships with 100 racks, filled them with 400 batteries (this was not fun), and I didn't see any hesitation from the game at any point. The 400th battery performed just as well as the first. So this is why I'm not sure that this is strictly a problem with the battery module itself and I'm trying to see if there are any common threads with other people having problems with the battery module. It will also let me attempt to build a similar KSP setup and see if I can reproduce the problem. Are there any other parts from any other mods causing similar hesitation?

I am unable to reproduce this performance issue that is being described as caused by the battery module. I made a BoxSat with 50 racks of nothing but batteries and my memory usage barely twitched. The only thing that did happen was that it fell over and blew up the pad. So, everyone that is experiencing a performance issue when using the BoxSat battery module please post your mod list and we'll see if there's a common element. I'll keep testing but I don't have a lot of information to go on beyond performance issue when using the battery module.

We were featured on the official KSP blog today! Very exciting! http://kerbaldevteam.tumblr.com

I don't want to get into the details of copyright and licensing here in the release post but please PM me your citation for this please. The basic answer is that we discussed the license we wanted to use when we were ready for our alpha.01 release. It was an afterthought that we were required to answer due to the KSP forum rules. We're very proud of our mod but it has been out less than six months and it is not yet complete. Since we're still working on BoxSat regularly and we're still in an alpha state we felt that community development and forks would be a distraction from our goals for BoxSat. I do appreciate your interest in BoxSat and I'm always interested in hearing how people are using BoxSat and ideas they have. Be sure to post any pictures you have as I love to see what people come up with. On an unrelated note we released in August 2014 but development began in April 2014 so we are coming up on a one year anniversary for development (yay?).

Some people are using CKAN and the way BoxSat is currently setup it doesn't play well with CKAN or even not reading the directions which is a weakness. Incorporating the NEEDS MM feature is in my bug/feature tracker and is waiting on me to do some follow up research on MM documentation. CKAN support would take some additional research, some changes to the mod structure, and a separate round of testing so not something that happens easily. If it looks like it's worth supporting then we'll support it. The COM is determined by the model as exported from Unity. So fixing it requires re-exporting some of the models and then adjusting the cfgs for the new COM. It shouldn't be too bad, just a bit of clicking, but there won't be two versions. It was an experiment in game mechanics but perhaps we'll settle for simplicity.

The angle of the dish is intentional and this kind of parabolic antenna is known as an offset dish antenna. Link to wikipedia page for offset dish antennas The way you have your dish setup it would be pointed at the horizon behind the camera. Which judging from the apparent polar latitude of Kerbin your probe appears to be operating in would allow it to communicate with an equatorial satellite in high orbit of Kerbin (assuming there isn't a mountain in the way). The hinged dish part is based on a concept image of ESA's Artemis telecommunications satellite. Link to high resolution concept image of Artemis satellite on esa.int

If you look at the stack nodes in most of the boxsat module config files you'll see that they have a z offset of 0.005 (our parts are scale = 1 so that's 5mm if my brain is working correctly). The probe core reaction wheels put out 0.01 kNm of torque. This is enough to cancel out the torque generated by a typical fully loaded one frame boxsat putting out approximately 3kN of thrust (reaction wheel will be maxed out). If you want to use the LV-1 engine at full power you will need to incude a reaction wheel module to cancel out the additional torque. This is working as designed. Do you find this imbalance to be a significant problem while using BoxSat?

I'll have to double check everything with RCS Build Aid to confirm that the correct parts are off-center. The probe core's reaction wheels are intended to only cancel out small imbalances and with higher thrust the reaction wheel module becomes necessary. So yes, a small amount is intentional to give the reaction wheel module value above what the probe core provides.

CKAN is not supported at this time. Please download BoxSat from links provided in original post.

I suspect that is a unity error so maybe try closing and reopening KSP as it sounds like something did not load correctly. I'll experiment on my end but I don't have much to go on. Also please make sure you don't have more than one modulemanager.DLL in your gamedata folder. Let me know how it turns out.

The engines are designed to be installed inside the payload frame. A bottom node for the engines has been requested and we are evaluating whether it can be done without causing problems.

I can't recall having experienced such a problem before. I would remove BoxSat from your gamedata and download a new copy of BoxSat just to be sure. Other common problems include more than one copy of module manager installed and having the wrong MM cfgs installed for BoxSat or you are missing a cfg from the optional folder. Otherwise you may need to try a second install of KSP adding mods one at a time until the problem reoccurs. Please let me know how it turns out.

When we made the mod I already knew I liked boxy satellites but I didn't know if the community would. Thank you. I'm not 100% sure but I think the reason we didn't do this is due to the size of the size0 node. Our parts are fairly small and so the size0 node is actually quite large for our purposes. I'm planning on taking a break from learning Blender this weekend to fix the bipropellant engine and maybe add another prototype or two. If there's time I'll make a prototype MM.cfg so people can try this out. I'm worried about how it might interfere with the main top/bottom nodes so I may have to put them on sideways (like the hatch node). I can't promise KAS support for this though as it'll be experimental. Sounds reasonable. I'll add it to the list. P.S. Thank you for including pictures. I love to see pictures of what people do with BoxSat.

I presume it would be because I haven't done anything to support CKAN usage for BoxSat. We only support manual installation at this time.

"Adding K to Every Word." Is that what we're doing here? We feel that Dura-Fail is a time tested laugh and we like the Dura-Fail brand. The textures are provided as PNGs so it's relatively simple to edit them. (For personal use only. The license currently does not allow for redistribution.) During development we spent a fair bit of time debating this name. I opposed the name initally because I'm not a fan of Kerbal Failure Syndrome (the meme that Kerbals are always incompetent) but eventually agreed because the name is really funny. - - - Updated - - - I agree that things like this would be cool. Unfortunately, to do something like this would require a modified ScanSat plugin which is a technical and licensing headache. The other way that comes to mind is to change their resource requirement to a variant of electric charge with the BoxSat module serving as a capacitor and power converter but this has it's own implications with the ScanSat plugin so it might not work while "on rails". So I think it's a neat idea but it has a lot of technical challenges and the result is that now you need one extra part to scan. I enjoy complex systems when they add choices and allow for multiple paths to success. If it some how enhanced the scan or changed the performance in some way but was optional instead of straight prerequisite it would be a more interesting choice. The technical challenges would still need to be solved. Edit: I composed these as two separate posts and some how they have been concatenated. Please enjoy this extra long post containing two separate replies.

The ScanSat antenna already fit beautifully on the BoxSat exterior. What sort of support did you have in mind?

Yup, it can just barely reach Mun. I'll grant you that it's unconventional for the current state of RT balance. I wanted to shake things up a bit. Since it won't maintain a stable connection in Munar orbit and can only reach the nearside of Kerbin from Munar surface (assuming LOS) it's not totally crazy. It does substitute for a lot of directional links in LKO and KSO (is anyone using this acronym yet?). In this context it is unbalanced for the current state of RT but if you don't like that then don't use it in that context. Also, I had a lot of fun playing RT without a commsat network and one crossed dipole landed on Munar nearside.

I'm fairly certain that the bottom of the payload frame has a node because that's where I attached my booster during testing. The engine goes inside the frame and fires out the hole in the bottom. Perhaps I am misunderstanding how you are trying to use it. Can you post a picture of what you've built?

I'll try and release a revised set of prototype parts as soon as I have some time. There were a few more prototypes that didn't make it in the pack due to time constraints.