CycloTech Parts Development (formerly One-Eye Industries)

[OrbitusII]

Take a look at the Current Release HERE!

CycloTech Parts Development (formerly One-Eye Industries)

As promised, here's a development thread for the new CycloTech/One-Eye Industries parts! Updates to this thread will come as I make progress on things. If I think to do it, I'll occasionally stream work on my twitch channel after announcing it here and on Twitter.

Current Plan:

(Copied from my post in the release thread)

Models:

Since Sauron's original concept rockets were inspired by Russian rocketry, I figured I'd do the same and grabbed a bunch of Soyuz photos and diagrams. There's also a picture of the Falcon 9 (although it lacks greebles, which is contrary to the direction I want to go) and several images of rocket exhaust since I'll be doing custom effects and want them to be more accurate than the Stock ones.

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Functionality:

I've been toying with plans for the parts since I am strongly leaning towards making this pack work both parallel to Stock and as an outright replacement. What that means (in theory) is you can roll with these AND Stock or remove the Stock parts altogether and still have a fully-functional rocketry program.

• Engines
  

• Liquid Fuel will stay the same and serve as the base fuel for all rocket engines

  
  

• Oxidizer will be split into two resources: Oxidizer and Hy-Ox (short for Hypergolic Oxidizer)

  
  

• LFO is less efficient but more powerful than LFHO

  
  

• LFHO will serve primarily in orbital engines while LFO is used in lifters

  
  

• Engines will therefore be split into two categories: standard and hypergolic

  
  

• Standard engines will use regular LFO, but have a limited throttle and cannot be shutdown

  
  

• Hypergolic engines will behave like engines currently do with unlimited throttle and shutdown/restart capabilities, but will use the LFHO mix instead

  
  

• Monoprop engines will also become more significant. I like how the Orange's engines work so there'll be more of those, exclusively for orbital use

  
  

• Fuel tanks will be split into Liquid Fuel, Oxidizer, and Hy-Ox sections
  
• Part Sizes will become DX, DY, DZ, and DW (analogous, but not necessarily equal to, the Stock 0.625, 1.25, 2.5, 3.75m standards)
  
• Solar Panels will be available in two versions upon completion: stock-balanced and nerfed (since I feel the stock ones are overpowered for the amount of electric charge the average vessel uses)
  
• Crew Parts will follow the style of the fuel tanks and Sauron's concepts with some aspects drawn from Russian space stations
  
• Aero Parts will not be a part of this pack. Since the focus here is rocketry, they're a bit out of the scope of this mod
  

• Disclaimer:
  I may reconsider this decision in the future, but for now there's no aero parts planned

  
  

I'm pretty confident in the new sizes and some significant inline Monoprop engines. As for Hy-Ox, well... That'll require some testing if I decide to go that route. Let me know what you think!

Current Progress: (as of Thursday May 29, 2015)

A four-nozzle engine setup like the one seen in the images of the Soyuz rocket's upper stage.

Three of the nozzles are missing because the template (the one that is present) isn't yet complete. Most of the detail work (except that on the nozzles) is done, and soon I'll get to work on UV mapping and texturing. The equivalent section on the Soyuz is orange, but I might take some liberties and keep it a neutral gray for now. A Sketchfab preview of the model will come when I start UV mapping.

Edited May 29, 2015 by OrbitusII

[OrbitusII]

Got the engine body unwrapped and did a quick AO bake to see how it looks.

Nozzles still need an unwrap but are done with assembly.

[OrbitusII]

Two update photos for today:

#1: Completed UV unwrap and AO bake

This looks really good, I like how the AO turned out.

#2: Started texture work

Compared to the reference photos the engine bells are quite dark; I'll probably lighten them up. AO also needs to be turned up since it's barely visible in the engine area.

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

Wait... Does this mean that you won't be making sauron's concept rockets anymore? Noooo...

[OrbitusII]

Yeah, while Sauron's concepts are certainly awesome, trying to build a set of parts off of those would only yield something like the KSOS, which is fairly limited in its construction (i.e. you can build the shuttles and that's it). Since I want this mod to be modular like the Stock parts, I'll be taking inspiration rather than directly building from Sauron's concept art.

[Sauron]

In fairness, they were never really designed with KSP playability in mind. I'm all for the decision!

I may well also fool around with some more ksp-focused arts (but my potato is giving me trouble).