my rover keeps accelerating...

[psychopoak]

hi everyone,

I hit some problems while testing my first rover this afternoon. when I hit "drives" the rover picks up speed, which is good. but when I try to brakes it barely looses speed, and more strange it picks up speed again if I hit "drive backward". so whatever I hit it seems to accelerate.

is there some "basic design" tips I missed? BTW it is a simple design based on a RoveMate and 4 M1 wheels, a couple of parts and an External Command Seat.

I already remapped key for rover controls to different ones than WASD.

I used mirror simetry to put the parts together (don't know if it matters) but I don't seem to see the origin of the problem.

Any ideas on where I should be looking for?

Edited June 9, 2015 by psychopoak

[Snark]

Huh, that's really weird. I've noticed some odd rover behavior in 1.0.x, but not quite as egregious as what you're describing-- in my case, it was a rover that just seemed to ignore its brakes completely, but only some of the time; and during its less-cooperative mood, I could press the "drive backward" key to get it to start slowing down, and then the brakes would work.

So, no idea what's causing your problem, but a few ideas for things that might be interesting to check:

- Is your "brake" key even registering? i.e. if you hold down the "B" key, do you see the little "brakes" icon up on the top status display (next to your altitude indicator) light up white? That will at least tell you whether you're actually trying to brake-- if it doesn't light up when you press the B key, this could be some sort of key-mapping problem.

- What if you turn on (and persistently set) the brakes by clicking on the brake icon, instead of holding down the B key? Any difference?

- Open the rover in the VAB (or SPH), go to Action Groups, and check the "Brake" action grouip (this assumes you've upgraded at least to level 2). Are your wheels listed there? (By default, they ought to be.)

- Have you tried playing around with the brake torque on the wheels? (It's available on the right-click UI for the wheels.) Try sliding it up to max and then try the brakes.

- If you deliberately flip the rover so its wheels are in the air, do they keep spinning even if the brakes are engaged?

- Is the rover draining power when it accelerates like that? What if you right-click on your battery (or batteries) and disable the electric supply-- does cutting off the juice kill the power to the wheels? (If it doesn't, that's a pretty obvious bug right there.)

Edited June 9, 2015 by Snark

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

do you have a joystick?

joystick throttle on rovers confused me at first.

[Claw]

It's a bug with the stock tweakables. If you place the wheels without right clicking on them, then they will usually work just fine. However, if you ever right click on them (such as to repair, disable steering, etc) then the brakes will be forever "broken."

The workarounds/fixes:

1) Never ever right-click on the rover wheels

2) Edit the save file (or .craft file) and change the wheel torque option to something higher than the default 30 (some of the rover wheels are upwards of 200, with the ruggedized wheels up at 500).

3) If you aren't opposed to add-ons, you can install my fixes. The specific one you are looking for is ModuleWheelFix.

Cheers,

~Claw

[psychopoak]

First of all, thanks to all 3 of you for your suggestions.

@Snark : my brakes work well with aircrafts. so i might not be the reason of all that. and when my rover is flipped up, wheels keep accelerating. I can see wheels slow down but they re-accelerate once I let off the brakes.

@Claw : the bug happens despites any click. but thanks for the mod, it is in my list of installed mod since I needed some of the fixes you included.

@Brainlord Mesomorph : THAT! you might have found the answer. I play with a xbox-controller, but in parallel I have a Hotas plugged in and the throttle was at 100%. so it might be the cause of all that non-sense.

It will test that ASAP, but it might explain a lot!

thanks guys!

@

[psychopoak]

Back to you guys,

I ran a couple of test as soon as I got back from work. here are my results so far :

- I move the throttle of my HOTAS back to 0, no results

- I unplugged my HOTAS, no results

- I remapped control keys of the rover part, no results

- I built a quick new rover with other parts, no results

- I installed "stock bug fix" from our pal Claw (I though it was installed, my mistake), no results.

BTW I narrowed down the problem a lot. everything seems to work perfectly when I want to go forward or steer any direction. Brakes seem to be working, even if quite weak. but once I hit the "drive backwar" key, it goes crazy:)

Actually the rover goes full throttle instantly and keeps going as if nothing else mattered. I can still steer it but no matter what I do it keeps going "pedal to the metal".

any ideas guys?

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

That sounds like some sort of corrupt .craft file to me.

do other rovers work?

got backup? an earlier build?

how much work to start over?

[psychopoak]

I am not sur for other rover at the moment, I will need to test.

BTW, what do you mean by back up or earlier build? if you think about my career, I don't and I don't know if I would like to restart the whole thing.

but if you mean my rover, it is definitely not a problem. I was just messing around with rover so no real hard work as been put into the design.

[Claw]

Ah, I think I understand your problem a little better now. Let me see if I can offer another two things that might be the cause...

1) Check your trim input after you drive a bit and make sure you aren't accidently adding trim. The indicators are in the lower left. Press ALT+X to zero it out.

or

2) There is a "stuck key" thing that happens with kerbals where holding the SHIFT key and pressing forward, then releasing SHIFT causes the kerbal to keep walking forward. Possibly this bug happens with rovers (unconfirmed). Do you do any other keypresses when you drive?

I suppose lastly, if you are using mods, might want to see if any of those are causing problems. Or at least keep an eye on the log file and watch for errors.

Cheers,

-Claw

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

I am not sur for other rover at the moment, I will need to test.

BTW, what do you mean by back up or earlier build? if you think about my career, I don't and I don't know if I would like to restart the whole thing.

but if you mean my rover, it is definitely not a problem. I was just messing around with rover so no real hard work as been put into the design.

Ships you make in the VAB or SPH stored as .craft files separately from your saved game in a folder called "ships." within the saved game folder.

you might have had a backup of that file, or I'm talking about rebuilding the rover, not starting the game over.

[psychopoak]

ok, I am close to desperate now...

I did everything I could, but no matter what happens everytime I hit "drive backward" it goes la crazy until it consumes every energy stocked, or flips...but even then wheels continue spinning.

It does not seems to be linked to my craft file. I started a new quick rover and nothing changed. Even in the sandbox mode, the "rover+skycrane" behaves exactly like any other rover. so I have no idea where to look at...

[HvP]

There are only a couple of things I can think of that haven't been mentioned.

Is control given to a part oriented in the correct direction? If a probe core or docking port that is oriented upwards has control then it might not know where "backwards" is from the perspective of the command chair. Make sure that you "control from" the command chair. If it's happening on other crafts then this is unlikely but worth checking.

Also, make sure that the new key binding you set up doesn't have the same key for "backwards throttle" assigned to some other function already. I've found that having the same key mapped for two different functions that could overlap can really confuse things, especially now that each key binding can have a secondary function. Also, make sure that you have the button checked to be enabled in the scene for "Staging/docking" modes depending on how you drive.

Lastly, I don't know if you have any mods installed like Action Groups Extended, but it can set action groups to "Toggle" rather than a simple press and hold. If you are using Windows I'd also just check and make sure that "sticky keys" isn't turned on in accessibility.

[NoMrBond]

Trim could be on? If you've hit alt+s at any point that'll be interpreted as constant 'reverse' input, so try alt+x to reset the trim

[psychopoak]

thanks for the support guyz..

@HvP : as you said it is unlikely if it behaves the same with other aircraft. I checked though, and even if I put a docking port in front of the rover, that does not solve anything.

trims don't do the trick either.

anyway it seems that my graphic card had had enough of all that space to render and died on me yesterday night. it's a good thing it happens now as in Belgium we have a lot of music festival, which will keep me from thinking about my dead hardware, but I will have to troubleshoot my hardware to identify the dead part, and replace it.

So thanks for the help, and see you soon with a boosted up computer.