Tw1

We could try to make some assumptions by looking at the terrain and where things sit relative to the equator. But, as things aren't quite going to work, as this is not a planet shaped by nature. Instead, we could choose locations where it would be nice to have a town, and areas where it'd be nice to keep things natural. @rbray89, I probably should've checked before my first post, as you're the maker of one of the procedural cities mod. Does a separate thread mean that this would be available as a separate thing? That'd be nice if people don't want repeated cities all over the planet.

To be fair, Kerbin City is unfinished, and the only examples of kerbal architecture we have are the space center, airstrip island, and some ruins. If you look at our own architecture, it's incredibly varied. Kerbal architecture is also likely to vary a lot as well. Mentioning it would be interesting*, but it would be a little hard to properly portray it, as it's nowhere near its final form. But, you could portray individual buildings by looking at WIP versions in this document: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aq-Kp1pObiWgdEVRSG54eHFtS2NKWFoyZHJranFub1E&usp=sharing#gid=0, should you need to. Or trawling through that thread. *I've been suggesting that it could be used as Kerbin's capital. But do what you want. If you ever want to portray a kerbal railway.. head my way. [/shamelessplug]

Ooo, a Vomit Comet. I know what I'm trying to make next. I like the way you portrayed the assistant being enthused by seeing something put into space, but the president more annoyed because politics. Worth the read. Nice job so far.

Now, where did we stop last time? Oh, that's right. Jeb has flown off towards the mountains, and Gene, Bill and Bob are touring the space center. The underground parts depot hadn't really changed. It was still a huge, cavernous space stretching from the SPH to the VAB. The giant racks sat empty, waiting to be filled with new parts. But Gene had something else to show them. Down at the bottom of the chamber, beneath the storage racks, was an architectural model. It portrayed a complex of buildings in a very similar style to the new KSC. Gene: "This has not yet been seen by anyone, apart from myself, and a few others. We've consulted the other major science institutes, gathered some ideas from the architectural team, and we are working, to design our very own Scientific Research facility!!" Bob: :0.0: *thud* Bill: "Bob? Are you ok?" ...... Once Bob had been revived, and they had properly inspected the proposed research center, Gene directed their attention towards a diagram on the cavern wall. (This is not it, this is a version Bob drew, when he got back home. The real one is top secret.) The diagram depicted a crane like mechanism, similar to what was used for transporting parts from the depot, into the construction buildings. But this one was bigger. Much bigger. And it was depicted as moving between the SPH, the parts depot, and the VAB. Gene: "You know how somethings are easier to make with the SPH's horizontal layout, yet much more difficult to replicate in the vertical set up of the VAB?" Bill: "Oh yes. That's for sure." Gene: "Well, this new system should go a fair way to resolving that. Hopefully, we'll be able to move something made in the SPH into storage, then load it into the VAB. Or vice versa. It will make craft construction much simpler. We may even be able to store prefabricated sections within the depot, and load them when needed. It should be much more practical." Bill looked closely at the diagram. Bill: "Yes. That could be handy..." Gene, Bill and Bob climbed up a long ladder, through a narrow, vertical passageway. At the end of that passage, Gene pushed open a manhole cover, and the stepped out, in front of... ...an entirely new building. The astronaut complex! Inside, they found everything needed to prepare an astronaut for spaceflight. It also featured a small visitors center, testing and training facilities, and a reception area for new recruits. Previously, recruitment and initial testing was done from a small office in downtown Kerbin City. The rest of the training was completed out the back of the VAB. EVA practice was done by tying weights to a space suit, putting a recruit in that space suit, then dropping them in Booster Bay. Crude, but better then nothing. The new building was a big step up. Bill could imagine himself and the guys hanging out in the new astronauts' lounge, relaxing after a mission. Bob recognised the snack machine from the old KSC. Still had the same dents. Don't ask how they got there. Gene: "Now, If you'll excuse me, I've got to leave you at this point. Meet me in the Mission Control building, at 9:45, for our media event. The KBC is coming, and will want to film some things with us. But first, have a good look at the other buildings, I want to know what you think!" ..... A few minutes later, Gene had made it to the new KSC aircraft control tower. As the KSC predated the age of commercial air traffic, they hadn't needed one at first. Now, they did- not that this was a problem. The tower definitely had its uses. Gene: "How's Jeb doing, are we getting good data?" Bobak Kerman: "Yeah, SAS 0.2 is doin' well, not quite as well as we hoped, but Jeb's doin fine." Jeb put the new SAS through its paces! Rolls, loops, sharp turns, and lots of other manoeuvres I don't even have names for. He even caused the plane to spin out at one point. Jeb: "You're awesome, new SAS, but you're still no match for Kerbal skill.", said Jeb, as he pulled the plane out of the tumble. Flying the nimble craft was always fun, but Jeb had had one thing on his mind since he arrived at KSC that day. The mountains! Rapid uplift, faulting, and then erosion had shaped the mountains in a manner that only happens on Kerbin- they were now a lunatic pilot's dream Jeb buzzed the peaks, skimmed through canyons, almost clipping the wings several times. Before long, he had flown by the entire range. Jeb: "Again!" He turned around for a second pass... Meanwhile, Bill and Bob discovered a memorial to an old friend. Bill: "It's good to see that this is still here." The Vehicle Assembly Building!. The centerpiece of Kerbal space center, the old VAB was one of its very first structures. It began as a childhood sketch- in crayon, drawn by the legendary founder of the space program. In that sketch, he added everything he thought a rocket maker's building would need. That very same sketch was eventually presented to an architect, along with a few other specifications. He was very surprised when the architect basically took the size requirement, took the shapes in the drawing, and made a building out of it. After all, no spacecraft making facilities had ever been made before, so there was nothing else to base it on. And ended up with the odd looking building that stood there for so many years. That building had almost completely corroded away. The buildings at KSC are made with an insanely strong material called Nokianite. It's also terribly heavy, becomes brittle with long exposure to radiation, and requires constant electric protection to prevent corrosion. Being so close to the sea, the old building didn't stand much of a chance when the electrical system failed. (In contrast, the VAB's twin at KSC2, still stands to this day, thanks to its sheltered position in a valley.) The roof of the new VAB towered above them. Construction on the higher levels was so loud, they didn't hear one crash, which had happened outside. Outside, colours of 9am sunset slowly filled the sky. Bob and Bill knew they'd better move on. Bob: "Jeb would've liked to see that. Where is he?" Jeb: "Ahh, guys! I'm over here!" Bill: "Hello again. How was your flight?" Jeb: " Great! Those are awesome mountains! But I, ah... um... new SAS leaves a little to be desired..." ................. Despite its proximity, they bypassed Mission Control. There was something else to see first. Or perhaps, you could call it four somethings. The Tracking Station! Originally just the one dish, now three, the tracking station forms the center of a Kerbin-wide network, used to track the position of objects in space. Without a tracking system, communication and control of unmanned spacecraft is almost impossible. In the past, a few vessels had been completely lost, bringing those missions to a sudden end. Nothing from any of these "Ended flights" was ever found again. Jeb. "Dishes! These look nice and sturdy." Bob: "I Wonder...... I wonder if I could get up there" Jeb: "Yes! We'll get you up there! Here Bob, climb on my helmet! Bill! I need you to stand there!" Bob: "Wooooah, careful guys!" Jeb loves it when Bob shows his adventurous side. He'll do anything to encourage it. Bob: "Wow." Bob: "How Do I get down?" ..... After Bob's little escapade, the three walked over to investigate the building itself. The inside was far from complete. Pearing inside, they saw several technicians, installing and checking everything. Fortunately, one technician looked up from his lagometer long enough to let them in. Eventually finding the stairs, they made their way on to the roof. Where they could see and admire the whole space center, now brilliantly lit up. Bill: "This place gets my approval." Jeb: "Yeah!" Bob. "Agreed." ........ Mission control. Previously, this, and the VAB were one. Lanches could be watched from the big red window- it had quite the view, if you didn't mind the tint. While it doesn't have quite the same vantage, the brand new mission control has much better, non-coloured windows. Lots of very clever kerbals work in here, which could have something to do with why it's built like a bunker. Debris noise distracting a kerbal programming an important maneuver could prove disastrous. On the side, they found a large staircase, that was just asking to be climbed. But before long, it was time to head in, the media was waiting. A film crew had set up inside mission control, opposite the main window. They'd have a great shot of the launchpad, Mun, and Minmus, as well as all the high tech looking equipment installed so far. Walt Kerman, KSC's new head of PR, had set this up to be a live event. David Kerman, host of many prestigious documentaries, stood before the cameras, opening the event. David: "Shortly, we will meet some of these men, brave explorers who have crossed the ocean of space, to set foot on alien worlds..." Jeb (muttering): "What's this guy on about, space is no ocean!" David: "Brave Kerbals, who have sailed into the unknown to.." Jeb: "Whoa! It's not like that." Jeb walked on to the set, in front of the presenter. He paused suddenly, as it clicked exactly what he'd done, but then.. Jeb: "Uh, Hi. I'm Jeb. And, uh, space isn't an ocean. It's a vacuum. And space travel is not like salling. It's more like throwing yourself. Except it's more complicated than that 'cause.." Jeb accompanied his impromptu lecture with hand gestures, awkwardly using his fingers to represent the motions of planets and space craft. The camera man muttered to the Boom operator: "Is this in the script?" "Don't think so. Let's just go with it." Jeb: "Soo.. yeah. Space is no ocean." Finished with his spiel, Jeb stood there, grinning. Kind of awkwardly. Saying nothing. Gene (whispered to Walt): "He never read the script!" Walt(whispering): "We can make something of this!" And he shoved Bill and Bob into the shot. Jeb "Oh! These are Bill and Bob! These guys are the best!" "This, is Bob. Launches terrify him, but his passion for space is so strong, he goes through them anyway! And Bill! This guy, you want him with you in space, he knows what he's doing. Though he did believe us when we told him Minmus was a lump of green cheese." Bill: "Nope!" Jeb: " Remember the cheese mining lander?" Bill: "Never happened!" Regaining his composure, and with the utmost professionalism, David Kerman stepped forward once more: David: "These Kerbals, and the other men, and women, from the old space program represent our first steps towards becoming a true, spacefaring species. Now, as we continue the journey, they will once again be our representatives, venturing on to the last frontier. Great discovery awaits." There will be one final chapter, to wrap up the story. We will celebrate, and christen, our new space center. See you next time! Edit: Scroll down a bit...

This could be cool... There are already a few projects adding cites to Kerbin, some procedural, one of them a community project, creating an explorable, unique city. Perhaps you could think about doing something with them. Are the lights an added thing, or do they replace the existing Kerbin texture? I'm thinking about how it would interact with universe replacer, which can be used to enhance planet textures, or give them clouds. Are they working by detecting which part of the planet is facing the sun? It's not quite clear from the video. Also, the density shown in video, from the Earth textures looks like they are too dense for Kerbin, IMHO. I don't think they're terribly urbanised, and I wouldn't put much around the space center, but that's just my opinion. It be interesting to debate where the cites on kerbin might be, and which areas are better less populated, but that will be something for when we can investigate Kerbin's biomes. .... That looks like a lot of thoughts from me!, don't be overwhelmed. I think this would be cool to see, when/if you polish it off.

They're great fun, plenty of opportunities to use and misuse the fact that they get kerbals to take their helmet off. Also great for setting up scenes where it would make sense for them to not wear helmets. (To be revealed in time) The rocket pack is extremely capable- I used one to land on the Mun from LKO. Had he had a full pack of EVA fuel, he might have got back to Mun orbit too, or maybe even home. It's almost made other tiny one kerbal contraptions redundant, so not sure I'll keep it. Might just inspire better tiny one kerbal contraptions. The jet engine pack flies best at 13000 meters, and got me my first landing on one of the islands south of Airstrip island. But I've yet to return, I always crash when landing. Parachutes are too heavy to fly with, yet EVA parachutes don't seem to slow you down enough, and the jetpack gets destroyed. But it should be possible with practice, and an EVA 'chute + powered landing. I like the idea of having the KAS node built in.

My method for rendezvous is simple. I make sure one vessels is a higher orbit to than the other, then create a manoeuvre node (anywhere) with an apoapsis or periapsis somewhere somewhere on the target's orbit. Then I drag it around, until the separation makers get close. If the orbits aren't circular, the node needs to be tweaked as I drag it around to make sure it will pass close to the other orbit. If I can't get the separation makers close, that means one of the ships needs to do another orbit. If I can get them close-10km or under, I do that burn. Then, I refine the approach using RCS, or tiny bits of thrust from the engines, watching the separation distance to make sure it's going down. It's possible to do without aligning the orbit first, but that often helps. It's possible to dock with stock systems alone- the trick is to watch your relative velocity. Keep it zero when you don't want to move. Make sure to rotate or position your ships so the docking ports are facing each other before approaching. A trick that can help you know which direction your RCS will fire, is to make your ship so it has a "Top" as well as a "Front". The RCS is aligned to the part you're controlling the vessel from. If your vessel is cylinder shaped, like most rockets, you can use small things, like lights or docking ports to mark the sides. Or you can just watch the Navball rather than the ship. It will be aligned there.

Good luck! It will be something like for me, when it comes time to make my own building- even if I do make a simpler thing than the original design.. Is nice to see another old fashioned style thing going in. Are you down for an official building as well? I haven't used your buildings myself, but some of them don't look too bad. You could cull the rest, and work on your best ones for possible inclusion, subject to Nothke's approval. Also, Nothke, have you looked at the model node things that were added when they changed the way things load? As buildings often use repeated sections, it could be possible to only store the sections needed, and assemble the thing in the CFG. But that would mean lots of separate files, as well as a lot of text editing, and I don't know if it would be worth it in turms memory and speed in the long run.

Nice !

Becuase watching a probe is boring compated to sitting on top of that SRB yourself? Because remote control is hard? I also hold this theory, but, it depends on how rapidly things can be unlocked.

I was playing around with it, and was getting pretty annoyed at how only one of the wheels seemed to work. So I found a way to fix it- I named each wheel individually, and gave each a separate module if the CFG. But there is still some way before the railway works... Unfortunately, using so many wheels in the one part means you can't see the clever little description I wrote. (stats still placeholder) So if there's no way around that, I expect everyone to read it in the CFG when this is released. But careful with the wheelmodules, they break really easily. Adding connection nodes brakes the game, somehow. Not sure why... which seems to be par for the course here.

I continued scattering Rail bogie prototypes over KSC. This one's working! Still needs much tweaking.

Story of my life..... maybe I'll sig this, my current one is ready to go If it's usefulness in terms of versatility, I'll nominate Sh'tuule. This is a shuttle type craft, with a theoretically reusable orbiter. I like to imagine it's the same craft each time. It has the delta V to put satellites into Kerbostationary orbit, Tundra orbit, and possibly polar orbit (never tested), and return to KSC, if you fly well. Also was used to install satellite networks around Mun and Minmus. It should be Mun landing capable (not yet tested), and has landed and returned from Minmus. A more useful aspect of this craft, and its predecessors is collecting and returning crew. I have a version saved that has the cargo bay filled with external seats. Station or Base crew rotations, picking up kerbals from craft without parachutes, dumping 19 kerbals in LKO... All feasible tasks with this ship. There is the argument satellites could be better launched with little rockets, rather than using the fuel it takes to put this thing up, but I like how cleanly it does it. Eventually, my space program will start making SSTOs.

A while ago, I suggested some sort of town hall, or physical representation of the forums, possibly based on the Roman forum, but with Kerbal forum colours. Another idea could be boardwalks for the beach/ channel area, but that would be pretty simple, and could possibly be set up with the module loading thing to place several repetitions of the one thing.

Part two.2 is almost ready! Depending on the other things I've got to do in the meantime, It should be here in a couple of days. Hopefully, before 0.22 is released.

Yes! It's not the Mun that's made of cheese, it's Minmus! I think I know what my next mission there will be. It could be that Minmus was even further out initially, or that it formed its shape when it got closer to kerbol, in a kerbol orbit.

My impression was that they were where other stuff sublimated off into space. The lakes are mostly around the equator, they'd get the most sun, even at the inclined orbit. But not convinced that alone accounts for the shape of the hills.

Basically, this: Was intended as a speed test. There are some instabilities that need working out...

For me, Minmus is a place of mysterous beauty. It's the first object in game that deviates from out own solar system, we've all seen pics of the Moon, but Minmus is something new. And not having a scientific explanation for its existence only enhances the mystery. There's something about the shiny, grainy surface, the calm, blue-green colour, and those curvy landforms, that gives an air of peacefulness to it. It's a light, friendly heavenly body, and I think the fact that it's a lot easier to land on makes for a better first impression than the Mun. I'm not sure if KSP simulates the visual distortions from the atmosphere, (I hope it does/will), but Minmus's mountains for me, have a similar effect to seeing mountains in super clear air- they seem much closer. Of course, IRL, I'm seeing everything on a 2D screen... I like Minmus, but the fact that its more than an arm's length away from Kerbin means I go there less than Mun. But it's nice to look back on Kerbin and Mun, and feel so far away.

The wheels! They spin! And they move it about! *insert cheerful mad scientist laugh here!* At first, things were a little crazy: But it was just a matter of modifying the rotation axis in the Part file. It still didn't travel very stable, tending to drift and turn, but that may just be because the front wheels weren't working. They have slightly different unity names, as I'm going to use a separate "WHEEL" module to control them. Only they need to respond to the steering controls, all the others will stay still. Also, they are only going to be able to turn at low-ish speed, with not the greatest turn circle. This is a train bogie, not a superpowered rover. But, the last piece of the puzzle, the last bit that could completely derail the making of the mod, is now shown to work. It's just tweaking from here. Now I know it will work, I've got some uni stuff to spend time on. Then, once I've re-reviewed Nothke's earlier experiments, I'll put to gether a few track objects, and we'll have a test release. SoonTM Yep! Some will be harder to to set up routes on, but it will work. That's pretty cool. Held together by Damned Robotics, I take it? My post count is up to this year! Looks like the end of it being interesting dates.

Magnificent use of the mod. Now.... launch it

I was also curoius.... And found this: It this model is accurate, that ladder beats the Telus in speed any day.

Yep! Or rather, it could be compared to things like this: Using all those wheels does make things tricky: My last attempt to get it to work was basically an attempt to replicate the wheel hierarchy 12 times over in unity, for each wheel. Still not quite sure where to put some things. But, I think having a part available simplifies using it. Plus, it doesn't break apart, which tends to be a plus IMHO... My own tests with the bogie in unity showed that it could cope with turns and rises of at least 3 degrees, but I couldn't to anything to test speed, or how well loads stay on. (I took a leaf out of Hooligan Labs's book, and made a big logo. I like it, it's old-fashioned-railwayish, and not that intrusive.) Nope. Everything I've done so far has been new to me. Any advice will be very useful. True, if they were to be launched from Kerbin, but kerbtown objects are generated on site. Though, the long term idea does currently include needing something to dig the dirt, and collect some resource before you can place segments. Basically, concrete fabrication from in-situ resources. But it won't be terribly onerous. Multi player and trains could be interesting. Especially at Kerbin City.. "Damn, someone blocking my path out from this platform.. Hey! I'm already in this one!"

Congrats on the rendezvous! Once you learn that skill, there's a lot you can a lot more. ...... Bob's look of shear terror is quite merited today. Poor Bob.... He survived! Kerbals can hold their breath for suborbital hops. He's so hot right now. I then did some experiments with New KAS.The cable looks much better than the last version. And landed that guy on the Mun with the big rocket pack. He looked so kerbalishly pleased.

1: Get to the Mun by any means. 2: Go to Minmus, with the proven Mun rocket. 3: Try and put more kerbals on the Mun. 4: Bother to learn how to launch into a proper orbit. As in, not just going up. 5: Rescue kerbals from the Mun.... Something like that.