codepoet

Yes indeed I do have some thoughts about the shape of the engine fairing I think if the lower section is larger then it will make it a lot easier to widen out to it, however if the lower stage is the same size as the upper stage then it will lead to an interested looking engine fairing! Progress Update I have managed to get some sort of texture onto the mounting plate. It is just a standard geometric texture, but allows me to start experiementing with marking out the UV procedurally. It also make the mounting plate shape a lot more visible. Below are a few more pictures. I plan to get the collider mesh to be rebuilt procedurally, and then update the download, as that would put it in a state where people could experiement with it a bit to see what it is capable of. 3 1.25m engines under a 2.5m part. Notice that the engines do not overlap, and so if you look really carefully you can see that the mounting plate widens everso slightly as is required. 1+6 1.25m engines. A tightly packed, non overlapping cluster of 4 engines. 1+4 configuration. Notice how some parts of the mounting plate have vertical edges and others have sloping sides.

part tools 0.20 was a .unitypackage file. However part tools 0.23 is a bunch of folders and files. What am I supports to do with part tools 0.23? How do I import it into unity? The readme for part tools 0.23 says 0.20 at the top! Is it even thr correct thing in the download? I have to say I am not terribly impressed - a readme with install instructions would not be too much to ask.

OK, I have made a little more progress, and have the shape of the baseplate being automatically generated as I want it. Unfortunately I have not got on to texturing it, so the part is completely black (which makes it hard to see what it is!) Texturing and recreating the original model is next. However things seem to be pointing in the right direction. Here is a picture for you all:

Just a quick update - progress is slow, but then I have a real life to lead too! Anyway, I have been playing around with the model for the plate, an in particular have been trying to generate it procedurally. This is necassery because I want to find a way of making things look good if the pattern of nodes that you want takes up more space than the width of the tank you are attching it to. The idea is to automatically generate a shape that is an appropriate adapter. After a lot of fiddling around, and trying to learn how the unity mesh class works, I have produced this: I know that it is not much, and there are some glitches with it that I need to fix, but the principle is sound. At the top is the shape of the 2.5m tank / pod that it will join to underneath. at the bottom it widens out to a shape that includes 2x 1.25m parts with their attachment nodes on the edge of the 2.5m part (if that makes any sense!). Hopefully it is will be more obvious to see what is going on once I have got the whole thing built correctly - but I wanted to share with you all the direction I am heading in.

This seems to be a recurring theme! I am looking to get new hardware because playing KSP on my laptop has resulted in it not just getting hot, but the sound and wireless systems seem to have ben somewhat fried. The sound will now cut out after about 60 seconds of working in any new appkication! very annoying, and the wireless - even more annoying - it is up and down that a tart's knickers. What is the story with integrated graphics> Can you use them, or do you need a seperate GPU? I am assuming that if you do not use integrated graphics then the CPU will run cooler. Are there i7/i5 models without integrated graphics?

I was thinking for going for I7 with GeForce770. I an coming from a 3 year old laptop that takes 5 mins (feels like 10) to load KSP, which really sucks for developping mods. What is ht? Hyperthreading?

I was thinking of splashing out some money on hardware, specifically to feed my KSP habit. Is there any advise as to the best approach? I am assuming that in choosing a CPU I need to go for one with a high single thread workrate (rather than going for one with let's say 8 cores) - what are the best CPUs from this regard? Do I need to go over the top with the GPU or will I not notice the difference? What other advice do you all want to offer me?

It is possible to simulate a barycenter by creating a body that does not actually exist (or is perhaps necasserily tiny (microscopic) and then put two other bodies in orbits around it, so it appears that they are orbiting each other?

Great to see a further release. I think this mod is fab. Congratulations - keep up the good work.

You're welcome.

In the editor have you tried EditorLogic.fetch.shipNameField.Text="My WAcky new ship name"?

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Why do you think reference designs for missions to Mars usually keep the colonists together in pairs? If a supply run is lost on launch at least one of the colonists will be able to survive until the next launch window

As it happens, I am doing some modding work at the moment, and one of my plans it to give the PWB Fuel Balancing mod a birthday. In particular I want to get it to: 1) also display the CoT and CoL while in flight, 2) Allow the user to move the required CoM position while in flight via a GUI 3) Get the balancer to play nicely with this mod (RCS Build Aid) to set the required CoM position to either the CoM, ACoM or DCoM as calculated by this mod.

I like this suggestion. I have often wanted to be able to switch between standard window selections depending on the task I am performing - ie launch, landing, plotting transfers, rendevous etc. For each of these I have a set of MJ windows I like to open, and I would love to be able to switch between them with one mouse click.

OK, I have added a download link to the first post so folks can have a play. Bug reports are welcome on this thread, as are suggestions for features.* Here are some pictures: Now when you press 'p' the procedural attachment nodes' positions are displayed in blue. Pressing 'f' will also display the new location of the "floatnode" in blue. Let's go to space

That is because I have not released it yet! This is not the same thing as the PWB Engine Fairing, which I have now retired, and will not continue deveopment on. This thread releates to a new part that has not yet been made avaiable!

I was wondering if you could change it to a slidy bar control instead

Oh yay! I have fixed the problem I got hung up on with loading. It took a lot of wrestling, but I know better understand the framwork into which the parts and partmodules are loaded and called. In fact it turns out that it is a good thing as I can see away forward that does not require any procedural attachment nodes to be defined in the .cfg file, so hopefully it should be easy to apply it to any part. In the meantime here is more whacky constructions, and since I can now save and load them, I was able to roll out to the pad an launch.

Well at the moment it can't be used for jack because I am struggling with the reload - but it think I know what the problem is. I need to stop the editor from changing the attachment nodes for all instances of the part! Fail!

That is an interesting thought - add this finctionality to any part. I don't know anything about ModuleManager, but perhaps it could help. In fact it is not stack_node_bottom that is the problem - that remains constant as that is in fact the floating node. The complication is adding all the other nodes, but perhaps module manager could help. For now I will try and get it all working on a specific part, and then see where we go from there. I am keen to get something up that people can play with, and then start loking into how to procedurally general a mesh (I am both excited and intimidated by the prospect ) I am sure other procedural mods will provide food for thought!

Could you please elaborate on the rescaling stuff, and how it works. As I understand it a part can have a scalingfactor and a rescaling factor. One of these (scallingfactor?) is set to 1.25 by default. Rescallingfactor can be used to "double up your part size". Do I ned to just multiply all my measurements by scalefactor and rescale factor? That way if your scalingfactor is 1 (RO?) rather than stock (1.25) then it will all come out in the wash. How did the 1.25 scaling thing start in the first place! Progress update: ------------------- I have not yet made a download available for folks to look at as I am struggling with the Save / Load. The game wants to bolt the other parts as it loads them before I get a chance to procedurally create the attachment nodes, so it is taking a bit of jigery-pokery to make it work. The good news is that I have got it to create patterns of attachment nodes made up of more than one ring of nodes. Captain Sierra's mega cluster will be just a click away!

Of course - get the AssetBase using Object.FindObjectsOfType! Sorry, I was being dull, and could not see the wood for the trees. Having said that, your are right about EditorLogic.attachNodePrefab - it is being used, but not asigned in the KSP code, which makes me wonder where is comes from (somehow I had concluded it was assetbase, but now I am not so sure!) Could you please explain what you mean by "directly assigned via unity"? How does that work, and in practical terms do I have access to it? I guess I can just use the prefab straigh out of EditorLogic?

A Prefab is a unity concept - it can be used as a template to create a new GameObject. I know that some are there as the stock game is calling this code to get them, and use them. I just do not know what they are called!

I do not think it is dead - it is called by the EditorLogic to retrieve the prefab for an Attachment Node Icon when it creates those (which is something I want to do as I am messing around with AttachmentNodes). However the problem is it is not clear what the name of any of the PreFabs are for be able to access them AssetBase::GetPrefab("myPrefab") ought to work, if you know what prefab you want. I tried a brute force attack to try to find something, anything in there, but it quickly became inefficent at more than 6 characters. Is there a way of asking a GameObject which prefab it came from? Does anyone know what is in the .assets files in KSP_Data, or what format they are in?