Deadweasel

As mentioned, "V" is your camera toggle. Also, if you weren't aware of that, you might discover some more cool shortcuts at the Kerbal Wiki. Give it a glance; I know it helped me out a few times! http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Key_Bindings

When you're ready to begin your final approach, hit the hover engines and turn off the lateral engines. The hover engines will take over the job of keeping you airborne, so you won't have to rely on speed to keep you up. Tilt the ship back to kill forward momentum (watch your speedometer), then go horizontal again and use throttle to start descending. One you're in "hover mode", any angle away from straight down will make the ship "slide" like a helicopter. It's a balancing act, but once you start thinking of it like a helicopter, landings get a lot easier. I usually take the slow roll approach to landings instead of trying for a straight-down hover touchdown, because control is extremely twitchy on this little bird.

Yes, definitely! The eyes are indeed spheres of their own, but they look extremely weird without some kind of eyelids. I was trying to improve the basic bug-eyed look they usually have in-game. I've run into a problem at this point, though. I spent a lot of time standardizing the mesh. I had a lot of tris and quads scattered around the thing, so I set about smoothing things about and simplifying the geometry to make it easier to make fine adjustments. I did this with half the body, using a mirror modifier. After all was done to satisfaction, I applied the modifier and began the bone rigging process. To my horror, upon testing the rig, a section of his stomach seemed to be "stuck" in space, refusing to attach to the rig, even after I'd added some weight paint to that section. It's as if that portion of the mesh is sitting outside of the rig for some reason, even though it's all ostensibly part of the same object. I've done so much micro-editing to this thing using so many different methods I've been learning through tutorials, I may end up having to go back and commit a massive do-over in an attempt to correct whatever weird bug has decided to introduce itself to the model. Blender can be such a royal pain in the butt sometimes. Much better (and more approachable) than it used to be, by far, but it still seems rather confused about the whole notion of UI standards. At this rate, instead of the "E" key being the first to start fading on my keyboard, it's going to be Ctrl and Z instead. O_o

The naming and organization methodology behind Blender's design suddenly clicked with me not long after I posted that, so I ended up finding that very thing not too long after I posted about it. Thanks a bunch though.

Here's where I've gotten so far today with my model. Got my feet wet with UV unwrapping and texturing, and now I'm regretting not having made the body and suit as separate meshes. Either I'm going to have to take it apart, or figure out how to texture that big honking (complex) model!

So I've been working for what seems like forever to get a good kerbal model rolling for use with the Kerbal Khronicles stories. So far I've been able to use my existing limited skills to build the base model, and have even learned how to handle character rigging! I have yet to be able to work on the textures, let alone any of the details for its wardrobe. I'm trying to develop versions with various suit elements on or off, as well as ones with different garb altogether. I'm also wanting to created various hairstyles (see the little fellas in my sig image below for reference), but hair is... well it's a work-in-progress like the rest of it. >_< I've been putting most of the focus so far into overcoming my initial lack of organic modeling skills through a convoluted amalgamation of Sketchup, Sculptris and Blender. I'm happy with the results so far, but the rigging was the part I was most concerned about getting done properly. I'm learning a lot about Blender in the course of this development, but everything I'm reading about Blender's texturing process is so complicated as to make me feel like there has to be something better out there for that part of it, instead. Any suggestions?

I for one absolutely applaud ANYBODY who gets bothered by those. It means they're actually concerned about their spelling and trying to be as literate and intelligible as possible with the community. This is a trait that is missing more and more these days.

It's one of those conspiracy theory movies, like 2013. The conspiracy is that NASA sent more moon missions than the public is aware of, and encountered alien life on the moon. It starts out pretty creepy, but then starts doing a low gravity shuffle toward Hollywood horror toward the last third. If you've seen Europa Report, you've pretty much seen Apollo 18. >_>

The visuals are only one potential aspect. What if it had a solid surface on which to land, but had incredibly high winds, or extremely thick fog? It could be the one world that REQUIRED IVA flight to land on, so you could watch the radar altimeter. Or they could implement something like the Kethane mapsat so you'd need to deploy a probe to scan for landing sites before you actually sent a manned mission there. Little touches like that would start making the game feel like there were real reasons to have probes and power and satellite dishes etc.

Sorry for the lag everyone. The next chapter is being worked on, but free time is drastically diminished by the day job and major life events. I'm not dropping the project, but I can't keep up a (relatively) rapid release schedule with all that's currently going on. The up-side to this is that I have more time to work out some of the finer details of the story before I sit down to write, which will only result in better quality on the finished product. Hang in there!

Eh, depends on the drive, really. I have run the game on a Velociraptor 10k RPM drive, and the load times weren't any different from a 250GB WD Blue. There are SO many potential variables to consider here. Not just the individual hardware components (and the drivers installed for them), but the actual OS platform itself! Unless people start comparing their results on a seriously massive scale (enough to get a reliable sampling of most players' rigs and configs), there's really no way anybody can claim to know for certain that one certain element is going to cause or fix issues for everybody else.

No worries, there is more coming. I simply got a bit derailed on that front by a week-long vacation that was spent driving across the country to move my fiancee in with me. I'm back now, and will resume writing in a few days, once the furious crush to unpack and place all of her belongings has been completed.

"Legalese"?

Eh? Which word?

According to the rules, yes they absolutely should. Maybe they don't seem to be adhering to those rules across the board, but name me one community where they do. At least people aren't getting banned for completely frivolous or ridiculous reasons like they do with Sony Online or EA. Also, I find Steam's conditions a fair enough trade in exchange for simple connections with others to play with, and not having to worry about ridiculous serial keys etc. Maybe you're too young to know what it used to be like with games like F-22 Lightning III or Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, or Homeworld, where we had to go through crappy unreliable third-party services to connect with other players; services that are now completely shut down, necessitating dirty hacks just to be able to enjoy some of the old games with friends. I don't need to cheat or intentionally troll strangers on forums to get some enjoyment out of my day, so I'm satisfied that I won't be having any problems whatsoever with Steam and the limited interactions I use it for (purcashing games, primarily). To be frank, I really do think that the people who are railing the hardest against Steam fall primarily into two camps: those who can't get over the concept of intangible goods costing real money, and those who get more enjoyment out of abusing the system and others to get their kicks. To address those people who are arguing against it in favor of having a physical disc: do you really still have the installers and license keys for those games you bought ten+ years ago? Do they still actually install and run well without a ton of research, CD cracks or registry edits? If the answer to any one of those is 'no', then you have a good reason for something like Steam to exist. At least I know anything I buy from there will work on my system, even if it's a legacy title.

If you join Steam you become part of a larger community which relies on its members to behave themselves in a civil manner. Basically, consider what could get you banned here, then apply that to Steam, and add cheating in online multiplayer games to the list of douche maneuvers that could get you snipped. Other than that, don't get all worked up over the legalese. Most of the most worrisome bits are designed more to protect them (Steam) than to provide justifications to term your account. Look at it from Steam's perspective: why would they be so quick to terminate/suspend an account, when those accounts are what are buying games from them in the first place?

...You realize Rareden has been keeping all of the artwork this thread is actually about on the front page, right? :/

Hahahahaha!! It's funny because it's oh-so-very appropriate! (If anybody's seen Oblivion, you'll get it. Otherwise you'll just have to watch. NO SPOILERZ!!!)

I can see them, but as is the case with just about everything that goes out of its way to include "free" in its name, it took an unreasonable amount of time to actually work (FOUR MINUTES for a single image to download!!!) Also, the images are clickable, and clicking the first one results in somebody slicing the hell out of a pumpkin off of somebody else's head. I am now unnerved and concerned for the future of the human race.

[email protected] Maybe tell somebody in charge so they can get your account at least under a temp password you can get in to change?

*sigh* No more caffeine for you.

Apologies, maybe I'm not using effective terminology. There's relative positioning (the white indicator lines), relative velocity (the red crosshair), but no relative orientation in Docking Cam. In other words, Docking Cam will get you centered on the dock, but gives no indication as to your actual orientation relative to that targeted dock, so if you're not moving the cam all around, you may be trying to dock while approaching it at an angle and not realize it. The other plugin, however, gives you additional markers to work with, so that when you target a dock, you can use it to first get oriented so that your nose is perpendicular to the port, and your roll axis is oriented how you want it, relative to the ship when you dock. After getting yourself oriented, it then works much like Docking Cam, showing you where you need to translate in order to get lined-up with the targeted port.

I agree with the sentiment that it would be cool to see more "action" shots of takeoffs and landings, but I also agree the initial kickoff for this tangent did sound a little rude, as if people were being called-out for "cheating" or something. Personally I just chalked it up to an attempt to be energetic and simply overshooting the mark. I don't think anybody believes for a single moment that I actually flew and landed Silverhawk on top of the astronaut complex, perfectly aligned and dead-center, but it made for a sweet scene anyway, and that's the whole idea to begin with.

The docking cam will help you get close to your dock, but doesn't give any information about orientation relative to your target. The other one does, which means that by the time I'm lined-up to dock, I'm also already oriented perfectly for it was well, and I didn't have to cam all over the place to get all the points of reference to do it. Also, I no longer have to ensure my target is aligned a specific way to get myself set up easier. I can approach from any angle and still hit that puppy dead-on, every time now. No more waggling for ten minutes waiting for the ports to get aligned and settled!

It's easy to get one yourself. Just launch a ship or plane, but don't actually take off. Go to map mode, and your ship's location will indicate the KSP's location.