electronicfox

So now I have some good news, and some good(er) news. Good news: 6.forty has made some great progress on the new plugin. Most of the features are there, but not all (The most notable being the suspension). Good(er) news: I am now looking for some testers. There are however some minor preferences for testing, so read those before you apply. --You must understand that you cannot become a tester simply for the sake of getting the new plugin early (thats right, only the plugin is new. You'll be testing with the older tracks). --Understand that these are not complete, they are completely unbalanced and do not have some of the functions yet. --If you can prove yourself to be a reputable tester, please do so (This would include any references/links etc). --You should know how to edit cfg's. --Your mission is to break these things. Fly them, crash them, make huge monsters with them, throw them at Jool, feed them to the space kraken. --report any (undocumented) bugs you find, to me. I'll then pass them to 6.forty if theyre plugin related, and to myself if theyre visual. You'll get a thanks in the release thread (and maybe a virtual cookie). If you wanna be a tester, message me here on the forums. Keep in mind though that testing positions are very limited (keeping it a low number).

Gotta agree with this. Sure the older parts may not have looked as good, but that doesnt give reason to downright insult them. Someone worked hard on those, and without those first parts, its likely there wouldnt be any remodeled parts.

This all depends on when the plugin is ready Then I can re-release the older sets with that. Then afterwards will come the new sets. In the meantime I'm playing with dDo and nDo, they're fantastic to use, and should hopefully help me make much prettier tracks still.

Ah yes it was moved here by DYJ, for good reason.

No problem! I am a fan of steampunk designs, and I've been silently following this mod. One more idea for thicker landing legs, I feel a design like this one (behold my super-crude 10-minute modelling and animation) might fit in with the steampunk look.

No idea if something like this has been mentioned already, but heres an idea. Alternative to the solar panels, heat conductive panels that face the sun, with small water-pipes running around the back-side of the panel. Heated water then goes to a small steam-powered motor to create electrickery.

Not to mention that you can often find a decent cpu/ram/motherboard bundle at pretty good prices if you do wanna completely update your hardware.

Your RAM looks like itd be the limiting factor here. RAM is pretty cheap these days and very easy to install. I actually have no idea if virtual memory really makes any positive difference, I've never used it. The mod isnt finished, but if it will replace most/all stock parts, it will likely use a good chunk of that RAM. I think if you can run the existing larger mod packs, you should be ok with this one.

Blender does indeed work on Linux. If memory serves (I only used it briefly many years ago, I stick to Maya nowadays) it has quite the learning curve. Just stick at it though, and you'll see just how fun 3D modelling can be.

Even with 64-bit, it'd still be good practice to keep a low polycount as possible, while maintaining details that cannot be baked well into a normal map. Its also not so much a limit to creativity, as it is a different challenge in creativity (finding ways to keep nice forms with low polycounts can be quite fun). Also remember that not everyone who would want to use this mod would also use 64-bit, it seems a tad sad to limit the people who can use these parts in any decent count to only those with 64-bit machines. I'd also think around 7k is a good tri count for a detailed engine, but it would be good to dial it back to around 3-5k. Get rid of any unseen surfaces, and Stubbles had mentioned a good few edge loops that can be removed.

Then you are one of the lucky ones. Or you are also using another plugin that seems to stabilise the tracks somehow? I have no idea if that could actually happen, but hooray, the old versions can still work for now.

Its funny that there was no mention of testers for this build (Unless I missed something). 6.forty will have to answer this one.

Keeping with our policy of only releasing things in the future, to avoid them nasty paradoxes.

I cant give an ETA, mainly because I dont really know myself. But also, because if I gave one and missed it for any reason, we all know how that kinda stuff goes.

The largest set of tracks contains both left and right reads, so these can balance without the aid of extra sets of tracks. The smaller set only has one tread, so you'll need to use symmetry in the spaceplace hangar, or some other wheels on the other side of the vehicle you attach them to.

I'm always open to helping someone out, but it has to be for something amazingly awesome. Something that makes me thing, "Awww ****, I wish I thought of that, daaaamn working on that would be so amazing!" But you havent revealed anything about your idea.

'nother good comment (I do welcome comments that also help make these look prettier). Little details arent my strong point, I often overlook them.

This is a very valid observation, thanks for that. I'll be giving them tracks a bit of a recolour, and keep this in mind for the future set too.

Are you referring to the newest small tracks, or both new sets? If the former, they havent been textured properly yet (they just have a normal map on), if the latter, I'll keep this in mind.

I say unbreakable...I mean not breakable in the way the stock wheels are they will still spontaneously disassemble upon striking a hard object at great speed.

A teeny tiny update, for teeny tiny tracks. For reference, that cylinder between the tracks is 0.5m It should also be noted that unlike the giant tracks, these are one-sided tracks.

Great to see you guys looking forward to all this! I'll let you know now then that the plugin side is coming along well, 6.forty is doing a great job with that. It should also be fully compatible with the older tracks, so when the plugin is ready for a release I will pack that up with the older tracks first, and separately with the crawler/mobile platform set. Then after the new tracks are completed, and their new parts (there will be new parts coming too, mostly adapters and structural parts. I'm also making some rocker-bogie systems, because theyre just missing from KSP altogether for some reason). When a new pack is released, I will rename the thread accordingly.

There is an earlier version available in spaceport, but isn't very compatible with 0.23

I do love me some reputation...although I have no idea what it does.

This is a good point (I just hijacked the thread of the old tracks without considering this, brainfart on my part). I'd be very appreciative if a mod could move this to the addon development area.