SpannerMonkey(smce)

Good tip, if i do that however I wont be able to see my flag part or will I???, i use it for stuff that doesn't have a flag or when i want bigger flags than standard. Hope you dont mind me asking another flag related question while we're talking flags? any way here it is. How do i get my transparent flags to show in the flag selection menu? I've got them in a Flags folder, they are the correct size, I've checked the properties of the standard squad transparent flag and see no difference in color profile size type etc, tried everything , any ideas?? Cheers Spanner

Hiys just run a test on my own flag decals and yes to get the transparent effect apply a KSP/Alpha/Translucent shader in unity. To get the best results for the decal. i found it best to create the quad in my modelling app and map the uvs for a standard KSP flag, then all the others should fit fine, thats how it worked for me at least. Hope this helps

HI, I'm presently sorting the latest update , should be up tomorrow with all that stuff dealt with, the present tweakscale arrangement relies an the stock tweakscale sizes, these can be found in the actual tweakscale folder but that's not really suitable for the forks and I appreciate that they are all on the large size, in fact all the hydraulic stuff tends to be , I have had issues with setting the appropriate travel when scaled but have it nailed now and have a custom set of configs for all the hydraulic type parts, as I say latest update should be up tomorrow and it should be good. Thanks for taking an interest and bringing this back to my attention however.

Hi love these little videos, had the good fortune to attend a trade test in Sweden for a small wheeled loader that used wheels very similar to the Mecanum wheel units, maneuverable barely sums them up, even loaded with half a tonne of tree it could dance like it was on ice, but control was uber positive with no horrible drifting around or dead spots, can definitely see a place for these in KSP. and those paddle tracks look like someone figured out how to extrude faces modelling app style.

you dont appear to have set a node direction for your stack node, 0.0, -1.2, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 2 says that the node is -1.2 down the Y line and that it is size 2 but it doesnt say which way the node should face, a typical arrangement would be 0.0, -1.2, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 2 which tells the game that the node is Y up, try it and see

Hiya, that unfortunately doesn't tell us much, however go to KSP data folder and check the output data log.txt for a comprehensive list of what is actually happening as the game loads. It's usually rather large , so if you cant identify the error zip up a copy and make it available to DL and I'm sure one of us will figure out whats going on.

Looking fwd to the update, don't forget the tweakscale if the model's suitable, And as an infobite to those less curious or much younger than I, way back before RL marine propellers were in existence and paddle wheels were the new big thing the commercial first trial between a paddle wheeler and a prop driven vessel featured a design very similar to the helical drive unit, although it was shorter the function was identical. and by historical record the screw won hands down, spelling the end of large paddle wheelers and of course changing the world. AS marine stuff is my thing, would you mind if I attacked your trial version to see if an actual propeller is doable. edit dont know if its relevant or even useful the FS (yes again) prop rotator module has a facility to swap the model for a translucent disc which replaces the prop and simulates motion blur very successfully, could this be adapted perhaps to achieve a similar result ?

Hi, I prefer Helical Drives, but as long as it works it could be called furry tom tom and i wouldn't care. Tested on the cat with good results, I expect you know about the strange pulsing or pausing depending how you look at it, of the units, and it's early days for the new tech, but it does what i want, loads of drag though, may need to be housed in a bay for my purposes, but here they are pulling 36Mton out of the water and pushing it back again and as a reference speed on/in water for 8 drives and 36tonnes 17ms, damn fine job yet again. cheers

Hi not replied to you before as it all seemed in hand and i kept getting ninja'd anyhow, it loads fine from me in 64bit with just the CFG changed to cfg. when the game hangs on loading at a specific point press ALT F2 and a little window will appear and it's very likely the problem will be stated there, as it loads for me I suspect you may have an issue with something not related to the die. And just so you know what to expect when it does load., If it was me I'd make them kas grabbable and see if you could hack into the bounce module from the world cup dlc, then the kerbs could play dice for a ride home, lowest score rides on the ladder:)

Hi again, after a short break caused by excessive crapness I've finally made the Turbo Diesel powerplant I've been promising myself forever, I like many others am not a fan of silent plug and play rover wheels, I've recently created a Turbine APU ( auxiliary power unit) for KerbalFoundries of repulsors and tracks fame, and it lead me to thoughts of other power plants, and being a lover of the infernal combustion engine and terminal petrol head this is what I've come up with. It'll work quite happily without the plugin created by lo_fi to control his APU that it currently uses and in the demo video below it is in manual mode, which means engine speed and therefore power output is controlled by the throttle only, while in auto mode the throttle is controlled via the plugin to maintain a certain battery level ( cool eh) In this demo I've applied another twist however, attached to the small fuel tank are two small fuel generators, these require both fuel and electric charge for activation, the only electric charge available is that small amount stored in the generator before engine start and any generated current once the engine is started and driving the alternator. The only fuel available for the engine is what is in the small tank, and if powered that which is produced by the fuel generators, the fuel generators require a fair amount of both resources to start however once started they will continue to produce a small amount of fuel even when the main tank is empty, providing of course the power needs are met. So in this instance its simply, no engine = no power(EC) = no fuel(LFO) = no go , simples. Once again forgive the appalling video quality , video super noob here! I have yet to decide on the final exhaust arrangement and color scheme and of course sound, I'll be trying a nice petrol v8 sound later, but for now I personally find what's existing satisfactory, feel free to disagree . I've been told by every notable modder and their auntie that ksp doesn't care too much about poly counts its colliders and textures that matter, having spent a very long time low poly modelling it's taking some getting used to, but in the case of this engine I've gone a bit madder than I would normally as I really wanted a semi realistic pipe layout, and tubes don't come cheap poly wise, it's not excessive being under 10k but it's a poop load more than the 1k poly restriction I used to mod to. Things I've included as eye candy are exhaust and turbo heating effects and rotating crank, output and generator shafts, and of course a poop load of pipe work. ( and as a note to those uninitiated exhaust and turbos do glow red to deep orange in RL, it's just that most people are never in a position to witness it, I'm sure most bikers with large unfaired bikes have seen that pleasing red glow from the downpipes after pulling up from a night time thrash) Model in unity prior to export

HI , i thought the shrouds where a stock item, in that most stock engines have them, just checked the standard squad configs and yes they do have built in detachable shrouds, so it's a feature not a bug, though somebody not so long ago mad a MM cfg that removed them or turned them off but i really can't remember who or when...

lofi very cool as usual, any chance of a tester? I've been messing about in ksp water since i started playing, so i know what floats, works doesn't etc, and real world hull shapes don't work sadly but spanner world hull shapes do, the screws would be ideal for my monster landing craft, being able to drive out the water for loading and unloading would be perfect. go on let me have a play, would be interesting experiment to actually build them into a hull.

Cant wait to get my hands on the mirror stuff, got at least half a dozens little projects that have been missing just that very thing.. Could the screws be made to work on water? That'd be a great alternative propulsion method for big stuff. As i've already expressed a preference for wheels you'll not be suprised that I've only just really given the tracks a good going over, I have to say that a real good simulation of a rubber track, my only reservation is that they seem a bit dead, rather like dozer (rough ride)rather than snowcat( smooth ride ) which of course was the benefit of the christie suspension mentioned earlier in the thread. , I see you're still tweaking the spring rates and damping , give the smaller ones a bit more suspension than the big ones if you can , real nice work as usual. Cheers Spanner

Here we go as promised a POC 4 link floating rear axle, if you think the model is a bit complicated you should see the unity hierarchy for it, that would blow a unity noobs mind, Ignore the hubs and discs, they-re just ref parts and don't feature in my plans.

I'll check out if it would be possible to make a shock out of an IR ram, i think it's doable because no matter what the actual IR part does the differences between them are minimal,..... a quick look reveals it is possible , now how best to exploit the potential. The octagonal base parts are from a really old mod called Marvelous Magnetic modules, it was an early swipe at interactive iva's, i've had them for so long perhaps since 0.18ish, of course refitted iva's and constantly upgraded for each edition , one of the many obsolete mods i still have use for. If i can track down the author maybe I can make them available again.

Hi, I've been asked before if its possible to do the separate axle and wheel thing, and the only snag is that linking the two parts together may still not give the suspension effect that's present in a one part piece. There are ways to do it but some of them lead to weird things like, driving around on axles without wheels, anyone following the path of wheel dev will rapidly realise that its what you cant see in wheels that's important not the visible parts. However, I think it's be possible to achieve some passable results with the trailing type axle and beam axle , as the suspension movement in the wheel for those is miniscule, 99% of the suspension comes from the IR joint at the base, I could definitely have a bash at a Proof of Concept( henceforth to be known as POC) The only way I've managed to get a bike to work with any sense( been riding for more years than most of you lot have been alive) is to create a pod with a really strong ASAS fitted so that it's natural inclination is to keep itself upright, that said much fun can be had in trying to make it all work As for a short course type trailing axle that's probably doable and is hitting right at my offroad obsessions nicely, spent many years building scale competition rock crawlers and sand racers , for people with lotsa cash, so I already have a million sketches of how it can be done. I'm thinking 4 link fully floating would be ideal for deranged behaviors, although it would definitely be a challenge to set up and be a larger part than even the beam axle, as there would be a need for a subframe affair that would carry the link ends and the shock mountings Sorry if my replies come sometimes delayed, having a tough time physically at present, so if anyone knows where i can get a cloned replacement for this worn out body that I've got to put up with let me know. Cheers Spanner

Hi gang I may have an answer to the stopping issue and a little control perhaps, I've forwarded some stuff for lofi to look at but in the meantime a proof of concept video, apologies for the quality , this recording lark is all new to me.

Hi all, there was supposed to be an update this weekend, it's actually ready to go except for one minor detail, I've now equipped most of the wheels with the smoothSteer and anti roll provided by KerbalFoundries, due to certain technical issues and to avoid any future conflicts a plugin is being compiled to accompany this addon, the core of the plugin has been in tests for a lot longer than 24.2 was, so very few issues are still present. As for whats due in this update , 4 new sets of wheels, comprising a twin wheel cantilever axle , and 2 types of twin and single wheel trailing axle , also included but very much a POC is a height adjustable rear landing gear unit. I've added tweakscale capability to most parts and although it scales well some issues have presented themselves, for some reason only affecting the trailing axles, knock out the IR element if scaled up from standard size. It will scale down fine, but up locks the suspension and removes the height adjustment on both the landing gear poc, and the twin wheel heavy duty type, the normal suspension equipped versions are not affected as they do not feature an IR element. Following constructive criticism I've redone the small rover chassis to remove the mesh error, and a few other details here and the like node locations etc. Preview gallery below

Al l of what nli said plus, the visible components of suspension you see in squad and many others are just eye candy, in that apart from looking cool they do nothing, well that's not exactly rue the do follow the wheel collider suspension movement, AS it is in the wheel collider that the actual suspension element is carried out. With that said you could still allow suspension movement to keep things smooth, the wheels would just go up and down in the box, one important thing to note here is that you will be mostly using named game objects for your project I'd expect you'd only need a basic wheel model and the rest would be empty game objects, the latest craze for hovering stuff takes this one step further and removes the wheel model completely and just has named game objects and colliders. The following are the names for the game objects you will need to make a functional wheel, unfortunately missing any out makes things behave badly. suspensionTraverse suspensionNeutralPoint trackSteering steering wheelCollider collisionEnhancer And everything in that list apart from collisionEnhancer and trackSteering are at exactly the same point in 3d space

The i intention for power supply is to have the engine directly tied to demand so increasing demand will increasing engine speed as engine drives alternator to maintain battery level, its already been proven as a concept just got to make dieselv8 version now . Loads of horrible issues with trailing axles , 4 versions all barely satisfactory , further construction and testing continues, I've seen the ICE stuff but not looked in to how it actually works as yet.

If you d be happy for a crane that wasnt telescopic i do have various versions of this in various styles, It'll be in my thread toward end of weekend, it uses an integral rottron to elevate boom , and i stick a rotatron underneath for slew, as to weight capacity , unitl your rover collapses under the weight is what it'll lift

Yeah cheers I got that:P the little snippet you posted is actually my favoured option also because , the plugin that this lot will become dependant on doesn't play nice with tweakscale and unusual wheel arrangements. Have had some thoughts on electricity generation thanks to another project i help out with from time to time.

Thanks for the time you've spent tweaking I'll certainly add that edit to the cfg of the next update , the large jump in sizes bugged me quite a bit also. cheers. Re the damper, the only thing the damper would do currently is to be eye candy, unless combined with the smoothsteer plugin as that allows damping and rebound adjustment, note however that all the actual movement and suspension is confined to the wheel collider and not the visible dampers. , I've added a damper to many other wheel units but in this instance i wanted simple, as damper placement would, due to the way the axle works require some form of subframe to connect it to the center bracket, the snag here is to stop things colliding I'd have to reduce the axle travel, I can add a damper equipped set in the next update though as a test. The new item will include a damper as it's still in revision. A trailing axle is a great idea I'll see what can be done. Edit piccies of new part in action

Hi you just make it as you want it in blender and export it , if you want different textures on each part , just make each part an object and assign a material and texture prior to export , engines usually have a normal, diffuse and emissive texture but can be all none or combinations of that arrangement

RE tags and layers. ignore the text note on the image and look toward the top , you see two tags marked Layer and Tag, if you click on them it gives you the option to create new tags or layers. The tags arrangement in the list is not important but the Layers is, if it's in the wrong layer it wont work, ladders and airlocks should be assigned to Part Triggers which is layer 21. Not sure which version of unity you use as layers and tags are part of the way the unity engine works and they are able to be set via the inspector in any version Materials I just use standard materials for my stuff and believe most others so as well, Unity call materials Shaders and they are selectable on material import and selection. try to use the KSP shaders as part tools can get grumpy if you dont, I tjink lacks textures are stockalike rather than stock, just make your own.. Not sure what you mean by multiple models into one part perhaps an image of what you'd like to accomplish would help