Mister Dilsby

Good start, and welcome to the forums! Not sure I've seen a lot of ISRO missions here before, should be very informative

(1) "Must spread rep around before giving more to MRS" (2) I am so using this in the comics!

I am searching for Posts only that contain the keyword "

I think I may have a workaround: Click "Advanced Search" in the banner, and search for "[quote="Kobymaru". (or whatever your username is, of course). I just did that with my name and it faithfully returned a list of posts in which I was quoted. You won't get an automatic notification but if you save that search and run it periodically ordered by date, you can see if there are any new posts that quote you.

Quite so! You're right, that "rule" is often thrown about and can be mis-applied. Maybe a better way to say it would be that showing can create feelings and associations in the reader that simply telling cannot. All true! Good writing focuses the reader's limited attention on the important elements of the story. In great writing, EVERY element of the story is important. An example of IMO terrible writing I've encountered is the "Warriors" series in which clans of cats apparently scratch each other to death and try to not get run over by cars. I am often in the unfortunate position of having to read a chapter to one of my kids at bedtime. A typical scene will have half a dozen or so cats in it, all of which have names, distinguishing features, personalities, relationships, backstories, etc--this signals from author to reader, "Hey--this character is important, pay attention!" But very few of these cats really have much to do with the central plot (such as it is) So, the reader goes crazy trying to remember what relationship Featherduster has to Toolkit (or whatever their stupid names are) and that investment never really pays off. That's a good idea! Another thing I do is simply increase the brightness in a photo editor, or play with contrast. The quality isn't great but you can at least make an invisible ship somewhat discernable.

Couldn't tell you, sorry. Maye there's a compression factor option somewhere? I just do it as .png and it seems to work.

Well the thing's gotta have a tailpipe... - - - Updated - - - I thought you in particular might like that one

And here's a general critique for the Sharkman's new story! Good efficiency in the opening, establishing who these kerbs are and sort of what they're doing. For additional efficiency you could even strike most of Janina's line "Yeah I know, right?" since Macford has already said they're going to be driving for days. You don't need much development with these two, since well they're going to die. And I like the cartoony "PEW" sound. Ok, this is where I think you might want to dial it back a bit. Your bad guys sound like Speedy Gonzales, and that is not usually a good thing. I would be extremely careful with characterizations that could be seen as making fun of other cultures or races. IMO some foreign non-English words and sentence structure is OK, "dialected" English can be dangerous ground. [section snipped, but lots more of 'los badguys'.] So, who's saying this part? If it's an unnamed narrator his/her character isn't clearly defined. It sounds like the author's direct voice. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you did put the reader into a world with dialog, pictures, etc. and then snapped out of that mode and into "hey everyone, here's what happened". It's kind of like you stopped telling the story. You could have had other characters find the wreckage, or had someone present a report to whoever is in charge of that side, or whatever. Anyway--if all you want to do here is put a basic narrative framework to make shooting up some vehicles even more fun, then by all means rock on. If you want to tell a story, well... I think you need to tell the story. But I would DEFINITELY dial back the caricatured bad guys un poquito.

I wanted to be Buzzter, but either that was taken or the Forum didn't allow names beginning with Buzz (good call if so, every other name would be Buzz something) So I "added K to every word". I made the avatar image later, to match.

Yes, exactly. No romance in my stories, nor (intentional) violence. Kerbals are basically immature kids who just happen to have a space program. As I answered one commenter who thought Bob said a certain naughty word in a comic: Closest relationship in my comics is between Bill and Bob, but given the above of course it is a completely bromantic friendship with no smoochy component.

That's a really great point, something I rarely do--of course it might not fit my model, after all how often do you see someone who isn't Starfleet show up on the Enterprise (and how well does it actually work when they do--looking at YOU, first season Wesley Crusher!) But yes, snacks for thought

Petunias? Wha? Sorry, hard to tell what's going on. Is that ship intercepting an asteroid, or already pushing one?

Getting closer... If you haven't seen it already, a report on building Micarooni Station is over here.

Those are good ideas. Diversity among the whitesuits is key--I find I need to give each one a "hook" for easy identification so that the reader can get familiar with and care about them. You should be able to sketch each character, whitesuit or orange, in one sentence, e.g.: "Dilsby is a relatively inexperienced officer who tries not to let his own self-doubt interfere with the enormous responsibilities of command." - - - Updated - - - Are you asking for a critique? Be careful what you wish for Anyway, you'll have to let me get back to you on that. Three new D:OB! pages going up shortly!

I can think of a couple to start: --screenshots are free, take more than you think you need especially to capture Kerbal reactions. For certain scenes you may want the same shot with and without background--I often do F1-F2-F1-F2 real quick. --mix up your shots. Some interior, some exterior, some 'portrait' views of the crew --edit down and say more with less; one of the most difficult things is knowing what NOT to show to keep the story moving. --vary your image size, layout and position. Make each page look fresh. --think about how the reader's eye is going to travel from one part of the page to the next. Guide the eye where you want it to go. --use quicksaves in case you didn't get the shot you want and have to do it over again --keep powerpoint pages open to store images and constructions you might use again (for example, I have Walt's "Forum screen" stored at the end of the active file so I can just edit it when i want to use it) --I use Imgur to host images and export from powerpoint to .png, it's really pretty easy

Good point. I'm sure... [ETA: And there's Red. Thanks!] Am really curious to hear from someone who's played with the animation modules how easy that would be, and whether stopping the door or ramp midway would cause problems with the collision modeling.

Very nice! And well done on the manual 'chute cutting, that takes a bold and steady hand.

Agree completely, and I like how you've shown his growth. I find the 'business' angle a particularly unique take. It gives him a lot of depth, more than I am going to do since I am writing mostly comedy and find it really useful to stick a bit closer to the archetypes Growth in characters is REALLY important. If the story doesn't change each character somehow, then well what was the point of the story? I've tried to show the growth in little scenes (like Lisa jetpacking over Eve for the science) but of course am really using the Interludes to drive it home. For Jeb I'm not having him change so much as I am trying to make the reader's understanding of him grow as the story progresses. As KSK mentioned, a really good way to do that is through others' observations of him, like Val is doing in her "ship's log" scene in D:OB! a few pages ago. Please, jump right in anyway! Jeb is a good place to start because he's a "stock" character in both senses of the word. Everybody kind of knows him, so the game for the writer is to not contradict Jeb's basic character while adding unique depth. But it's even harder, and potentially more rewarding, to characterize a whitesuit. So--what tricks and techniques do you all use to make characters other than KSC staff and "core four" jump out of the screen and grab your readers?

The same way you can transfer 300 tons of fuel between two ships that are only attached by a grappling claw, I guess. Hm, can you also transfer Kerbals through a klaw? I don't think I've tried that. You just did. Thank you! I think you're both right. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, but if it does--wow, I'm writing this and I don't even know who'll come out on top!

That's not a rendezvous, that's a flyby That's why I'm saying don't try to do it just with the maneuver node, work on your close approach techniques. Once you figure out docking you will never be bored even in LKO.

I like that approach. As Val said it in my book, "He's not the 'idiot savant' people say he is. He might not even be an idiot." Jeb prefers to hide his depth and the hard work he puts in, and is content to appear to be surviving by blind luck--only Val (whose character is all about leadership in my stories) really understands what Jeb is like beneath the surface. I think that giving any "power" character some insecurity is a good idea, and having Jeb be insecure about new things is a good choice that doesn't conflict with the canonical badS-erry

You don't exactly thrust retrograde. A good technique is to, as you approach, thrust off the retrograde marker and "push" that marker onto the target bearing. (navball must be in Target mode of course). Remember, you are trying to have zero relative velocity at the same time you have zero distance to target. So, use the "push the retro marker" technique to gradually reduce both to zero at the same time--always correcting your heading towards the target as you approach and as you reduce velocity. I try to be under 100m/s relative when I'm 10km away, and under 10 m/s relative when I'm one or two km away, but depending on available thrust sometimes I get a little bit saucy and practically "suicide burn" into the docking port. Once you can rendezvous, then we can talk about things like N-S port alignment and three-axis control authority

Am loving the look of the new ramp, have always loved the cargo bays. What I DON'T like about the bays is that they always open 180 degrees each side, clipping into wings and whatnot that are installed on the Mk2/M3 body centerline. What I'd really like is a slider bar in the VAB/SPH that selects how far the door or ramp can open. You could set it for, say, 120 degrees instead of the 180 degree default so it doesn't clip wings. Or have it open wider. Or set it to zero and have a hollow bay. Wondering how hard that would be to code--am imagining it would require no change to the animation, just have the animation stop when it reaches the maximum pre-set value. But I really don't know.

Quite so--especially since we are all working with the same source material, and in many cases the same stock characters and basic situations. I find it very interesting how each of us approaches characterization of the Big Four. SQUAD gives us their jobs and some personality information based on how they act in-game, and the writer fills in the rest. How? One of the basic rules of writing is "show, don't tell." In other words, don't say to the reader "Jeb is a nut", write a situation where Jeb does something nutty. Endersmens used a very nice technique recently where each of the four was asked the same question, and their four responses gave each orangesuit a quick personality sketch. My initial characterization a of the four are more spread out, but I did consciously try to hit the reader with each character's basic personality from the start. The first page Jeb appears, he interrupts Gene's launch sequence with "T Z spacebar". Later on I gave Jeb some scenes to add depth. Over Duna he quotes a Robert Frost poem, and a lot of scenes go into the differences between his and Val's approach to flying. So maybe this is a good discussion point: what do you do in your stories to establish the "core" Jeb character, and what do you do to make him "your" unique Jeb?

7/10, seen on that famous Group and elsewhere.