iamaphazael

That is a really nice render, Razorcane, and the diagram that Jack provided is very useful too. The fairings are something I'm going to have to think carefully about. Maybe the answer is to make them work like they were originally designed to do: the panels stay attached to the adapter and open up like flower petals. That way, I could do it as just a single part and set it up as an animation. That would avoid the wobble issue, and make it so it didn't need to attach at two places. As much as I like the idea of jettisoning the panels, and as much trouble as animations give me every time I touch them, that might be the best solution to the problem. What do you guys think?

One regarding ships, the other regarding plugins: 1. How should we be packaging .craft files that we want to distribute with our packs. If we put a /Ships/ folder in our mod folder, will the game find them there? 2. How are plugin collisions handled? If somebody makes a part that depends on the Lazor system (for example), and distributes a dll with their pack, and the user already has that plugin in another mod folder somewhere, what happens? Does the game have a way of checking versions and uses the most recent version of the dll? Or does it use each dll in a mod folder only for the parts within the same folder?

I was wondering when someone was going to do a 2.5m connector node. Your looks very nice, as does the tunnel part. These will help make large space stations look a little less silly. Keep up the good work!

No worries about editing configs. You're welcome to do whatever you want with the parts for your own use. All I ask is that you don't share your modifications with others (at least not without asking first). Yeah, the game doesn't seem to like dealing with large masses. I'm in the process right now of going through and rebalancing the pack to try to reduce weight a little bit so it's s little less wobbly on takeoff. I want to give the parts just enough fuel to do a mun mission, so it will actually be a challenge to fly the Apollo mission with this, rather than just having it be a cakewalk. A user on reddit tried to do something similar to what you were trying, making a replica with real-world values. I believe his approach was to try to match the actual thrusts and burn times, which yielded a rocket that was wildly overpowered for a ksp mun mission, but was an interesting project (http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1dl8d4/i_built_a_saturn_v_not_a_kerbal_equivalent_a/). I also just found out recently about that center engine cut-off, but I didn't know that they started up the main engines in pairs. I briefly considered breaking down these Saturn engine parts into individial components, which would make all that stuff possible, but I think simplicity is more important for the time being. Maybe once the basic set is complete I'll go back and do a more realistic set. Thanks for taking a look. Keep an eye out over the next couple of days. I'm getting ready to release an updated version with the new config balance, updated models, and 0.20 file structure

Assuming you're talking about coming in for a landing, the most efficient method is the "suicide burn": a max-thrust burn at the last possible second that lasts just long enough to bring the ship to safe landing speed just as it encounters the ground. Most efficient, and also probably the most difficult to do right, for obvious reasons

There have been some heated debates over what units we should use to talk about the electrical energy in the game. The thing is that the way "ElectricCharge" functions in the game is not at all an accurate representation of how electricity works in the real world, and so any attempt to try to apply actual principles of electrical engineering to the system in the game is destined to end in pain. It's best to just think of it as a different flavor of fuel, because that's how the game treats it. Maybe someday Squad will implement a more realistic electricity model, but it doesn't seem like they're particularly interested in going in that direction, and personally, I don't think it's needed.

Do you happen to know if Rshift-H will work in the Linux version?

Because it's a very interesting philisophical question. Yes, the person who steps off the transporter on the other side wouldn't even notice the transport, and as far as they're concerned, they absolutely are the same person who stepped onto the first pad; but the question is, what actually happens to that person. What you think about whether there even is an actual "consciousness" that is persistent over time, or whether we're just a very complex stimulus/response machine, probably affects how you come down on the transporter question, or whether you even think that the question matters.

The folder structure should be fine. You should be able to drop them into /Parts/ and /Plugins/ as usual, but I'm pretty sure that some of the parts in that version did use a rescale factor, so you will probably have to go in and edit the scale lines in the cgfs as described at the bottom of that sticky. Let me know how it goes. I think that by the end of this week, I ought to be in a place where I can put out a new development release. The textures still won't be in place, but I think I'll be able to finalize the model scaliing and the cfgs to a point where I should be able to put out a 0.20 compliant version for people to mess around with. I will keep you all posted about that.

I'm having no problems either. I think a lot of the issues people are having are the result of trying to use craft and save files from previous versions.

The first bit is correct. You load the model into Unity, finish it up there (add thrust vectors for engines, boxes for hatches and ladders, that kind of thing), then export it as a .mu. You misunderstood me about the second part there, though. There's currently a system in KSP that allows you to load .dae models directly into the game, without going through unity. That's what's deprecated. Unity should continue to support dae from now until forever. So, there's your datapath: Solidworks > .dae > Unity > .mu > KSP

Not to beat a dead horse, but Blender really is great once you get past the initial confusion factor. To answer your question, though, I have heard of people using Solidworks to make parts for KSP, so it can be done. Unity supports a wide range of file types for models, including at least FBX, DAE, BLEND, and 3DS, so if you can export to any of those you can pipe them right into Unity. If you can export to DAE, you can make some types of parts without ever messing with Unity, but support for that in KSP is deprecated and will someday go away, and Unity isn't that hard to figure out (at least to the extent that it's needed to make KSP parts). If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. Good luck!

I try to keep the zips of all the versions I've downloaded. I started playing around 0.11, but the earliest archive I can find is 0.13. I don't keep any of my old saves though. I don't get all that attached to the stuff that I make because I know that it's all going to change

Thanks for the input, everyone. I'm definitely going to size them up to the proper scale. Also, I know everyone is probably busy downloading 0.20 and planting flags everywhere, but i thought I'd give you a glimpse at the Lunar Module interior. I think it's going to look awfully pretty once it's done. Sorry the lighting isn't better for this pic. I had a hell of a time lining things up so you could see the CSM out the window, and then I realized that I've got the interior oriented differently from the exterior orientation. That's one I'll have to take care of at some point. Anyway, happy flags!

Harvester did a series of blogs a while back that showed off his early work on the game (before the first public release); and, in fact, the first couple of proof-of-concept versions were 2d.

Have you got your suspension and wheel objects set up in Unity?

Then, leave debris set to infinite. It's really not as much of a performance hit as you seem to think it is.

I am an idiot. I had set all my sharp edges, and that didn't seem to make any difference. I forgot to actually apply the modifier :| It's looking much better now. Thanks for the reminder. Yeah, I guess that's what I'm going to end up doing. This thing is going to be a monster.

I have made some tweaks to the proportions, and you're correct on both counts. The fairings go up higher than they are supposed to. I had to do this in order to enclose the LM without making the rest of the rocket any wider. Also, the size ratio between stage I/II and stage II is different. I originally did this because I was trying to make the Saturn parts compatible with the sizes established in NovaPunch and KW, but that kind of went out the window today when I messed with everything to get the fairings to fit right, so I may go back to the correct proportions for the rocket. I suppose I could go all the way, and scale up the rocket so it's the proper size with respect to the LM/CSM, but I'm pretty comitted to not making the SM smaller than the 2.5m it currently is, so making the rest of it proportional would make the whole thing pretty forking huge. If that's what people want, though, maybe that's what I'll do. As always, input would be greatly appreciated

Someone asked me when I was just getting started with the Saturn parts if I'd make a Ib. It's something I'll definitely consider when I finish this project. KSP is going to need to get a taller VAB, though

Thanks for your input. I take your comments in the spirit they were intended. As Ph34b0t points out, all the textures you see are placeholders that I've made just to have something to look at. Most of them are simply full-frame washes of a solid color. I've got a collection of reference images, and hopefully myself or someone else will be able to do a better rendition than I've got so far. As far as fairings go, I'm not using fairing factory, and the ones you see are custom-made. Although, mine also have the problem that they don't attach to anything at the top. I've tried to make the collider meshes as small as possible to reduce wobble on them, and we'll have to see how that holds up. The worst case scenario will be that they'll have to be strutted together from the inside. Time will tell. Yes, I am. Or, I'm at least developing them in tandem, as they need to be compatible with one another. I may release them as separate packs. Not sure yet. You seem unhappy about the idea of doing them together. (Also, I haven't forgotten about you. I'll put together a set of models and get it out to you hopefully tomorrow).

Today's progress: Messed around with the fairings a little bit, and then had to resize the Saturn parts (again!), so that the fairings would clear the LM and not leave the legs sticking out through them. Then I had to go back and resize the fairings so they fit around the CM properly, then that didn't work, so I had to go back and start them over from scratch. It's been a long morning, but now I'm pretty happy with the way they came out: (NOTE: I know the actual Apollo fairings didn't have the black and white pattern on them. That was mostly so I could tell if they were clipping into each other at the seams or not. I'll make them the correct color for the release version). So my next order of business, I think, is going to be to figure out what to do about the shaders. I thought it was just me going crazy, but I remembered stuff looking better before, but I found one of my old screenshots, and it does look worse now than it used to (the old version is on the left, the new one on the right: I have to figure out if it's something that changed between 0.18 and 0.19, or if something happened when I switched over to Unity 4, or if there's something else I missed. If anyone has any insight, please let me know. Thanks. (Edit: Wow, I'm not very observant. I just noticed that the insignia and stuff on the tanks are different between those two images. I must have used the textures out of the Kerpollo pack when I went back and redid everything in Unity 4. I just replaced them with the textures from KingTramp's original parts, but, alas, that did not make things look any better) That's it for today. Happy launches!

It seems like arctan( (ap-pe) / (circumference of planet/2) ), while not completely accurate, should give you a ballpark idea of how steep or shallow you're going to be, and at least be a repeatable calculation that you can calibrate against

Yes, the probe-sized parts are .625 m

So I finally got around to experimenting with internal models today, and here's the result so far: It may not look like much yet, but I'm pretty thrilled that I was able to follow tjitte's comprehensive but difficult to read tutorial, and now I have a pretty good sense of what the process looks like. The Kerbals are understandably a little nervous because they don't yet have any instruments. Or windows. Or proper textures. But they've got nothing to worry about. All that stuff will get there eventually.