sumghai

My last space station maintained an orbit of 370km - far enough to not need orbital corrections for ages, but close enough for most of my crew and resupply rockets to reach.

Note to first-time readers: When this thread was first posed in May 2013, the original intention was to extend upon fusty's original and existing station parts pack; he has since deprecated his parts and handed over the project for me to maintain. If you don't want to wait for an official update, you can check out the GitHub repo for this project to download the very latest (but highly experimental) WIPs. Of the numerous mods I currently have in my installation of KSP, one of my favourites has to be fusty's FusTek Station Parts. Designed to "vaguely resemble some ISS components", these components feature clean, bright colours whilst still being reasonably compatible with stock parts. I do, however, have some personal misgivings regarding the Karmony II nodes - namely the lack of crew portholes, as well as the mandatory four-way recesses, EVA hatches and lander canopy windows. As such, I've been musing about making some module variants for quite some time. So, without further ado, I'll be documenting my first foray into mod part authoring in this thread. Objective My aim is to create a range of station module variants / IVAs in the same style as the FusTek Karmony II nodes, which would comprise of: Karmony III Node: identical to the Karmony II, but without the EVA hatch and lander canopy Mission-specific modules: as above, but without the side docking recesses and includes portholes at appropriate locations Habitat module: will tentatively house 3~6 Kerbals, with galley, shower, toilet, stowage and sleeping alcoves Science module: max capacity of 4 Kerbals, with banks of computers / switches and one glovebox Storage module: essentially a passageway lined with storage containers Utilities module: additional power / life support / water storage [*]Kuest airlock: ISS Quest-like dedicated airlock module; IVA will feature two empty Kerbal spacesuits stowed on side walls [*]Kupola: similar to the ISS Cupola and the 0.20 stock Panopticon by ClariaLyrae; will be design both as a space station observation pod and a planetary lander command pod (and so will be the only module with flight instruments) Detailed specifications (subject to change) may be found at http://bit.ly/kspSumghaisFusTekInspiredParts My Expertise Whilst this is my first modding project, and by extension have not worked with Unity / KSP PartTools before, I am reasonably familiar with modelling / texturing / rendering in Blender. Administrivia Obviously, I'm in the process of seeking permission from Alex (fusty) himself regarding permissions and source geometry files, although I suspect that he, like many others, will have plenty on their plate with the 0.20 release and revised mod file packaging scheme. If all goes well and I do manage to complete this mod, I will by default include source geometry files along with the parts, and release them under a Creative Commons licence for other users to examine / remix under similar conditions. Progress Report, 23 May 2013 Fig 1 - (Left to Right) Karmony III Node, Mission-specific module (all variants), Kuest Airlock, Kupola Did some rudimentary modelling in SolidWorks 2008, and a clay render in Blender 2.66a / YafaRay 0.1.5 to illustrate the key concepts. I've omitted fusty's signature panelling, since those are technically normal maps - the key point here is to focus on the overall geometry. The Kuest airlock's outer hatch is represented by the rounded square on the side of the smaller protruding cylinder, as seen in the real Quest airlock. The Kupola will probably have sliding blast shutters for the side window and a camera iris at the top, as I personally feel the real-life Cupola's massive hinged plates lack the comical representation of tech in KSP. Needless to say, if I could have access to fusty's source models (or even a list of precise measurements/dimensions), I'll be able to jump straight into making the actual in-game models. I'm also wondering whether to add more EVA handles, particularly at the circular ends as a "ring". Thoughts?

This happened to me before - I revived Jeb by doing the following: - Backup your quicksave and persistence files - Delete the quicksave - Edit the persistence file to revive Jeb It seems that the quicksave sometimes takes precedence over the persistence file.

Fusty, I believe SpacePort is back up - no need for the mirror

Strange. 0.19.1's IVA views clearly show Kerbals in seated inside the capsules. Even if I disregard the seated positions, I still would like to see some width and depth measurements for the default standing posture.

My understanding, from the few forums posts regarding Kerbal anatomy, is that Kerbals are roughly 1.0 metres tall in-game (a figure that apparently also includes their helmets). What I would also like to know, however, are the width and depth measurements - this is so that when I attempt to do IVAs in the future I can properly scale things like passageways, bunks, toilets, showers etc to allow Kerbals to fit inside them. Measurements for both standing and sitting postures would be greatly appreciated.

27. Despite all our failures (sometimes even catastrophic), we have no shortage of volunteers, no shortage of patriots. ...wait, wrong game.

Probably something a bit off with your rigging.

Dr. Strangelove FTW

Presumably, brightly colored handles were chosen to offer the highest possible contrast and visibility to astronauts on EVA - grey metal handles on grey module platings obviously won't fit this criteria. I had a peek in the part folders for the Karmony II Nodes. Apparently, since the textures and normal image maps are PNG graphics, one could in theory tweak the colors in Photoshop/GIMP, and their appearances would be updated the next time one loads KSP. I could check for you, but since fusty isn't willing to share the source files for his models, there's no way I could tell if I'm correct. Besides, I suspect that a "true" metallic texture would require poking around in Unity.

I personally think that the yellow EVA handholds are appropriate to the caricature-like nature of KSP's art style, and brightly-colored handles on station modules are also definitely realistic in real life: Did you mean from changing the color from yellow to metallic gold, or yellow to metallic silver?

I flew a few during my high school years. My first rocket was a Quest Astra III, which I promptly lost on its first flight due to its parachute being snagged by high winds. My second (and last) rocket was a scratchbuilt design dubbed Black Arrow 1, which had both forward and rear fins as well as a streamer in place of the parachute. BA1 flew twice - the first time, it was recovered successfully, whilst the second time, the streamer failed to deploy and it became a rocket-powered lawn dart. Luckily, the only damage were from the forward fins on the nose cone digging and tearing into the body tube. Although the damage could have been easily repaired with some replacement tubing and couplers, I gave up on rocketry mainly because I was living in New Zealand at the time, where the only rocketry supplies vendor was an unreliable old git who seldom responded to emails or phone calls, and was always on the verge of "going out of business". BA1 is now gathering dusty in a smelly old shoebox at my parent's place. Perhaps one day, I'll have better luck finding a supplier here in Australia.

False - I've never heard of Dubstep before. The user below me has killed at least one Kerbal.

Make sure you've activated the Kerbal's personal RCS system by toggling R, before attempting any maneuvers.

MechJeb 1.9.8's default of 10km seemed to work well for me - when I upgraded to 2.0.7, however, the default became 5km, so I set it back to the 10km I was accustomed to. So it appears that, at least for Kerbin, anywhere between 5~10km is good for the general case.

I was banned from a Halo CE Multiplayer Match for conversing with my teammates in English rather than Spanish.

...you attempt to deorbit an upper stage from an altitude of 370+ km after deploying a payload, only to realize the only batteries for powering MechJeb you had on your rocket were the ones on the now-separated payload.

Banned for being located in the most remote place on Earth.

Excellent! That's interesting - I didn't know one could texture in SketchUp. I guess that's because I've spent most of my time working in Blender. I see. nDo seems to be quite powerful, especially with the ability to do automatically update on-the-fly the normal map transforms on arbitary shapes. I'm also not too fussed with how the modules look without illumination (since I usually install some of bac9's subdued lights on them).

I'll echo the others' sentiments that placing RCS thrusters further out on a large ship / structure may help. The space station I'm currently assembling in orbit has generous numbers of thrusters on every module, such that I can rotate the entire station to whatever orientation I want reasonably quickly.

Funny enough, I was thinking about posting these exact questions. Probably a good thing I first did a proper search of the forums for an existing thread, and read Harv's interview. Ideally, I too would prefer the whole-craft draw system, with the ability to maneuver the Kerbonauts around freely inside the interior of the entire docked / assembled spacecraft, possibly even have the ability to open/close hatches between modules (but not dock/undock from IVA - that's asking waay too much of Squad at this stage) I also share Vostok's concerns regarding haphazard placements of docking ports on parts, resulting in awkward clipping of module interior assets with docking hatches. The easiest to solution to implement would be to have part authors design their modules to limit where standard-sized Clamp-o-trons could be placed, and design their IVAs accordingly (i.e. keep interior assets away from potential docking port locations).

Way too cool, nothke. I especially like the VAB/SPH-style module attachment whilst in orbit. Looking forward to any preliminary release(s).

Exceptional work on the FusTek Station Parts, fusty. I greatly prefer the Karmony II designs to piecing together numerous stock parts for station modules. I'm interested in helping to make some additional Karmony II-style modules, if you don't mind - I'll probably start with habitat, utility and science module variants (all with just two ports on opposite ends), and when I feel a bit more confident, maybe a dedicated airlock or even unique IVAs for the aforementioned variants. I do have a number of questions / requests: Based on various postings here on on Kerbal Space Port, am I correct in assuming your workflow involves the following? (besides iterative testing): Modelling the geometry and collision meshes in SketchUp Export as COLLADA .dae file Import into Unity Add textures and normal bump maps Add airlocks / ladders etc via with KSP Part Tools Export as KSP .mu file Write CFG file [*]Would you be happy to release the source files for your parts (geometry, Unity configs, textures, normals) under a Creative Commons licence or equivalent? [*]What graphics program did you use to create the textures and bump maps? Thanks in advance, and keep up the great work!