Neutrinovore

I can confirm the non-compatibility with LLL parts. I ended up with a 'ship' that looked more like an abstract Salvador Dali sculpture collided with an office building.

I believe zzz posted this link: http://www./?q7pcuabkndolh9q on page 11 of this thread to do exactly what you describe. I installed it thinking I needed it for regular radiator operation, but it definitely makes the panels track the sun face-on instead of edge-on. I don't know if it contains the code or module to actually function as a solar panel, you'll have to try it out yourself to see. If not, I'm sure someone can help you with adding the necessary code to the config file. Incidentally, if you want 2 other sizes of this part, go download the KSP Interstellar pack, there's this size plus one bigger and one smaller. The big one is pretty freakin' big, too, definitely B5 scale. And you can change the colors and the glow and all with them just like you can with these. FYI.

Yes sir, I like the landing gear a LOT! They just need a foot at the tip to spread out the (as of now nonexistent) 'ground pressure', and you can check that feature off in the 'finished' column. I wonder if you can incorporate a section of the hull there at the end of the leg in its folded position, have it go with the leg and flip around/unfold into the landing pad as the leg is rotating? Kind of like the stock 'heavy' hydraulic leg from Squad, the way that foot works, kind of. Plus, add a panel to the leg itself, so that when it's up the gear just looks like another slice of hull plating, and then it reveals the structure of the leg as it folds down. I've been looking for flush fitting landing gear like this ever since I started playing KSP, so by all means keep going this direction! Oops! I just checked the pics again before I finished up, you've got doors that split and slide into the hull, that works just great too! Lol, good thing I took another look! Okay, forget about leaving an exterior hull panel attached to the leg then. But you could still use the technique I mentioned with the foot. Or, just have the foot be inside the bay too, and it unfolds as the leg comes down, either way. As for the top docking port cover... meh. I mean, it would work, obviously, it just looks a bit overly busy and complicated. Hmm, I hope you're a 'Star Wars' fan - okay, at the end of 'The Empire Strikes Back'... that's 'Episode V', if you're young enough to think about them that way, lol... at the end, when Luke is dangling from the antenna and the Falcon is coming up underneath him, you see Lando in the ship go to the top hatch, and as the elevator platform starts to raise him up the hatch door opens to the outside - what about that hatch design? It was just four 'pie wedge' sections that each rotated out of the way on a pivot at one of the outer corners of the wedge, into a recess in the hull, obviously, just as you have planned here. The four way symmetry would actually fit right in with your ship, come to think of it. Anyway, the only reason I suggest this is in the interest of utilizing the 'K.I.S.S.' principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid. This isn't to imply that you're stupid, lol, it's just that usually the simplest solution is the best. I want to give my 2 cents about having forward facing retro thrust engines: I don't really feel that they're necessary. If we're talking about 'real life' they would just be that much more dead weight to have to carry into space at the beginning, only to use them for maybe a few seconds during a mission. Since this ship only exists in computer code, yeah, it doesn't matter, I know... But again, K.I.S.S., right? Also, freeing up the space in the hull for the extra engines means that you could have even more space for cargo. Perhaps a separate bay with a ramp that could hold a small vehicle like a rover or small shuttle? This would be similar to Wayland's WT-51, where he's got the huge main cargo bay in the middle, but then the nose has its own separate little cargo area. Just a thought. In any event, if you give the ship itself enough SAS torque, and/or RCS thrusters, or at least allow the player to add reaction wheels and RCS blocs as they see fit, I don't see why the ship couldn't just flip around to burn retrograde as normal. At least I'm HOPING this thing is still somewhat maneuverable, lol. It should be, the circular design is optimal for keeping the polar moment of inertia as low as possible, the only shape that would be better is a sphere. Okay, I think I'm about done rambling at you for tonight. I'm getting really geeked about this ship, Vlam, it keeps getting better every time you post an update! Later, my friend.

I agree with you, Betaking. While I'm all for modders trying to release the best possible version of their mod that they can, the likelihood that the next update of KSP will 'break' the mod in some way is too high to ignore. So that's how we get borderline 'vaporware' mods like this, and pretty much anything from Wayland or MSI, to name a few off the top of my head. These are mods that are in perpetual development, and just as they become 'almost ready for release, just needs a few final touch-ups', Squad updates the game and 'breaks' the mod, and then the mod has to be restarted from scratch, etc. ad nauseam. It isn't my intention to be bashing these mods or their developers, far from it. But yes, Betaking, I too have noticed that sometimes we all can let 'perfect become the enemy of good'. My opinion, worth what you paid for it.

Of course, how stupid of me. Okay, ZZZ, disregard all of my previous request, I just won't land on slopes anymore. I can't believe I never thought of that, derp!

Hmm, I may have inadvertently started something here... Sorry, Alex. But, even though it is - was - a very nice looking texture on the internal portion of the disc, I think most folks here are right, there's not really much point in that part being so pretty because we won't see it anywhere else other than during construction. I don't know that I'd make it totally hollow, though. Maybe just a solid disc with simplified art representing the batteries and wires and such, with a more basic 'hatch' design in the middle, a la the stock KSP designs you referenced before. I also agree about the poly-count issue, this would look a bit better as a true 'circle'. Or at least with more, smaller flats, I'd say at least double the number of sides. Anyway, I DL'd the first version you posted, and briefly started up the game last night, but I couldn't find the part in the 'Utility' section, or anywhere else. However, I was very tired, so I may have just plain missed it, or perhaps didn't get it installed in the right folder. Either way, don't worry about it, it looks like you'll be releasing a new and simpler version soon anyway, so I'll just wait for that. Later.

I just posted some well-deserved kudos to zzz on the Interstellar thread for his latest awesome creation, everyone needs to go check it out! I've noticed, zzz, that you've been incorporating more and more animations into your parts recently, so I hope to perhaps plant the seed of an idea in your genius brain: Landing legs. In my opinion, this game is woefully lacking in landing legs that are actually useful AND good-looking at the same time. B9 has some, the H50s I believe they're called, that are somewhat what I'm looking for, but they have several major drawbacks. One, they're clunky and boxy and just really don't go with anything else in the game visually. Two, they don't extend far enough away from the hull to be very useful, especially the side mounted ones. They have to be right at the very bottom edge to even have any hope of extending down far enough to clear the lowest part of the ship, and forget having any kind of bottom mounted engines, the legs just aren't long enough! Ahem, anyway, three, most landing legs are very flimsy, causing the ship to wobble and tip over if landing on any kind of slope, even if they're mounted in a wide stance, they just bend on their attachment point until they break off or the ship falls over. There are two excellent designs in the NovaPunch pack, both in the 'Science' category for some strange reason: the Thor (or is it Odin? One of the Norse gods anyway) legs. They're strong, extend quite a way out to the sides - but not, unfortunately, downward very far - and come in two sizes, the larger of which has an (ugly-black-colored) armored-looking fairing. Anyway, as I said, there's a lack of strong, useful AND good looking parts in this category. Just sayin', buddy. If, and I mean IF, you choose to think on this matter, I would visualize some various enclosed designs, such as the Odin legs or the B9 ones, but with your superb design language, both visually and structurally. By that I mean that I can already tell that when I DL the new folding Warp Drive ring I'll probably sit and watch it fold and unfold for 10 minutes straight the first time I launch a ship with the part, lol. Anyway, hopefully we'd get some bottom mount, side mount, maybe even inline stack versions like Devo's Wayland 'Mechpod' arachnid legs, except, well, you know... better looking. Sorry, Devo, if you're reading this, it's just my opinion, that's all. Okay, I'll wrap this up. I know you don't tend to like it when people request specific parts from you, I just see what appears to be a gaping hole in the choices available for one particular kind of part, and I think that you could probably come up with 5 or 6 really great designs if you really wanted to, so just think about it. That is all, as you were, carry on. Neutrinovore out.

Oh dear Lord, you're like a drug dealer! You've got me hooked on your designs, man, every time you release something new I just HAVE TO HAVE IT RIGHT NOW!!! Lol, I'm assuming that the folding/unfolding animations are just as cool as all of your parts look... Awesome... And I don't really even like this mod, as I've stated before, I find it too overly complex, but I've installed it and altered configs as necessary just so I can have all of your cool parts. As I will do with this part, lol! Keep up the great work, zzz, I eagerly await whatever you come up with next.

Lol about the hatch thing, yeah, I didn't recognize it as such when I looked at it. And I wasn't expecting any kind of actual 'hatch' or EVA functionality, I just hadn't grokked that that was intended to be a hatch in the middle. It wouldn't matter either way, from the pictures this texture is absolutely gorgeous! I hope it isn't too memory intensive, there's been a big movement in the last weeks to severely shrink RAM footprint without affecting the appearance of parts, so I hope you've implemented that concept. Anyway, gonna download right now. Oh, BTW, if anyone wants a .625 meter part, it would be rescaleFactor = .25, yes? Later everyone!

There you go, the dev himself has plans for the other sizes, so I'll let him provide the parts. He's right anyway, they'll look better if designed in their 'native' sizes... Wait, what? There's a HATCH in the center?!? I missed that, I need to go back and look at the pics more closely, lol!

I should be able to do that, unless the dev or anyone else objects. But unless there's something hinky with the scaling of the stock part, all I plan to do is copy the entire text of the file, from "PART {" all the way through to the final "}", and then paste that text back into the config file 3 more times underneath. Then it should just be a matter of changing the "rescaleFactor" for each separate part. And of course the descriptions, giving correct size info, etc. and changing the weights or whatever else should be different. Sometimes the 'rescaleFactor' can be tricky, though. This is a 2.5m part, so if the file says "rescaleFactor = 1", that's easy enough, you should just need to change that number to ".25, .5, and 1.5", individually for each part, of course. But there are lots of exceptions to that 'rule', so it doesn't always work right on the first try, so if you don't feel confident trying it yourself, you'll just need to hang loose until I can get to it. Anyway, I'm at work so I haven't seen the file or anything yet. And I might not even DL it tonight, I'm pretty tired. But if no one else gets to it before I do, yeah, I'll post it here. But only after I've checked to be sure it works myself, you understand.

Yep, downloading this tonight when I get home. And about 10 minutes after that I will have 3 other resized parts cloned into the config file, for .625, 1.25, and 3.75 meter stacks. Although, if you had plans to offer the other sizes yourself, I wouldn't have to do that...

Okay, I figured out how to do what you said above... I think. It took me a few tries. When I double clicked the batch file, it brought up what looked like an old DOS screen in a window, but it didn't seem to do anything else. I should have looked at the files before, but now the ISA artifact.dat files are only a few KB each, so I guess it worked. I'm about to start up the game and see if there's any difference. Wish me luck!

Okay, I'll freely admit, I'm stupid. I took a look at the page linked above... What do I do with it? I guess I'm not tech savvy enough or something because I have no idea how to implement the code that's posted. Any chance of anyone somehow turning this information into an executable or whatever it's called that I could download and put in the correct place in my KSP directory and run every so often to clean out the useless data? I'm pretty sure that's what you guys are talking about, anyway...

No problem, just thought I'd ask. I'll probably go through and re-do my own configs then. Keep up the great modeling work!

Again, it's all good. I was just making sure I hadn't completely killed the mod, that's all, lol.

I love zzz's parts, but this mod is too much like work, having to figure out all of these resources and whatnot. I can tell a bunch of you are having a great time with all this fiddling around, but I'm sorry, I just want to built ships and fly them in space. Zzz, would you consider posting 'simplified' versions of your parts to your own site? I mean, engines that are just engines, reactors and electrical generators that just use standard resources, etc.? Much like how you have versions of the science lab and heat radiators that don't require the various resources and plugins to use. I really wanted the warp drive part of this, but if it won't work with 'infinite fuel' enabled, then I guess I don't get no warp drive.

My suggestion for the next mod to turn your attention to would be JARFR/THSS. That can be pretty laggy for me, anyway. And also, even the 'low-res' LazTek pack causes my rig to chug a bit, especially with the landing gear parts. My 2 cents worth.

You're right that it may be 'inter-mod shenanigans' (lol, excellent phraseology!), but I had the same problem when I first installed NP as well. I solved it by going through NovaPunch as well as all my other parts and deleting stuff that I was never going to use. Like the NP command pods - for whatever reason I just didn't like the style of them, so I deleted the parts from the directory. And since I deleted those parts, that meant that the craft files that used them were broken, so I deleted those, and so on. You can give it a try anyway, see if it helps. If you've already done this, I'm out of ideas. Rotsa ruck!

Kewl, thanks much! I shall download tonight.

I think people are missing the point. I believe that Virindi is claiming that this plugin tames the Kraken! We shall see, sir. We shall see.

Hey, how's it going? Was it something I said?

Umm, maybe I'm missing it. Do you have an updated download available, or is it still just the initial version?

Hey Lack, just checking in. Thought I'd see if you're working on anything new. It's been a while since we've seen any WIP screenshots. If not, that's cool, I figure you're actually playing the game, lol.

Btw, something I've noticed... and this doesn't affect the usability or utility of this mod, it's just a quirk... Anyway, when I hit the 'translate forward' key, the thrust vectors indicate the FORWARD FACING thrusters firing, obviously causing the green movement vector arrows to indicate rearward movement. Same thing the other way - 'translate rearward' = rear facing thrusters firing = forward movement. This only seems to be with the forward/rearward axis, though. Up/down and left/right indicate properly. To be clear, this is just with the graphics in the SPH or VAB, when in flight the thrusters behave as they should. No reason they shouldn't, this plugin has nothing to do with actual part function. I just find it odd that that one axis is inverted, that's all.