[WIP] Vanguard Astrodynamics - Current project completed

[Randazzo]

Another day, another engine. Available on github (link in OP) for giggles.

[wasml]

Engine clusters -great idea! watching closely.

[Randazzo]

Engine clusters -great idea! watching closely.

Thanks! I certainly hope they turn out to be as useful as I imagine they will be.

Next engine is done - VC-8 "Triton"

Everything is cleaned up a bit and all the parts are now named properly. Textures have been converted to DDS and duplicates were replaced with blanks and cloned within KSP using MODEL nodes. It's in a decently playable state now, though be warned the engine tank butt adapters have the habit of vanishing after a scene change. This is unfortunately a stock issue. Happens with the fairings on the heatshields as well.

Anywho, pictures.

2.5m adapter

3.75m adapter

Quad-clustered, 3.75 cluster plate

[Guest]

Well, crud. I wanted to give this thread another 5-star rating, but it won't let me!

[Randazzo]

Well, crud. I wanted to give this thread another 5-star rating, but it won't let me!

That's alright, I'll mark it down on a post-it note! I appreciate the kind words.

I've completed the landing cluster adapter, the lander engine, and the big lifter engines. I think that pretty much covers everything unless it feels like I left a gap somewhere.

The lander adapter/engine are easily configurable for wherever you need to land (or for seeing how many engines you can cram in the thing... I got up to 22.)

The adapter comes with a fairing, naturally, and is surface attachable on the outside via twenty-five frickin colliders since concave colliders are a dirty word.

That's a stock texture on it, and it looks like DDS doesn't agree with it. Ah well.

So here's the lineup thus far:

(from left) VC-L1 "Tethys" @ 10 , VC-1 "Umbriel" @ 250, VC-5 "Rhea" @ 500, VC-8 "Triton" @ 950, and VC-10 "Titan" @ 1425

All the engines have their own adapters for mounting as single engines as well as the ability to surface mount for clusters (and the whole idea behind this). The Tethys works as a .625m engine, Umbriel mounts to 1.25m tanks, Rhea mounts to 2.5m tanks, and Triton and Titan can mount to both 2.5m and 3.75m tanks.

[wasml]

Just downloaded these and am playing with them. A few comments:

1) Thanks!

2) The Tethys sometimes attaches upside down. Sometimes works on the cluster adapter - other times not. Always seems to mount upside down on the plates.

3) The Rhea looks like it would fit on a 0.625 stack but doesn't have a flush node to fit that size. They could be surface mounted but it will be hard to center exactly.

4) Nodes look small for the size for the Triton, Titan and 3.75 cluster plate.

Now I need to see what other mod I can do without so I can squeeze this one in...

[AccidentalDisassembly]

Love the engines, seems like a good idea. To add to wasml's comments:

1. Fix for Tethys: node_attach = 0.0, 0.36426, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0

2. For the VC10 and VC8, the smoke trail effect could be speed = 1.0 1.0 without much degradation I think. Had 4 engines going, was laggy with smoke as is, maybe just me.

3. The VC5's flame effect seems (subjectively) kind of far from the nozzle, could be set to localPosition = 0, 0, 0, or localPosition = 0, 0, -0.1

4. VC10's flame can be set localPosition = 0, 0, 0 as well if your preference is the same as mine.

The VC10's nodes are better as size 2 I think, but I guess the 3.75 top node could be size 3 too:

node_stack_top1 = 0.0, 0.05032, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 2

node_stack_top2 = 0.0, 0.52256, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 2

node_stack_bottom1 = 0.0, -3.55378, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0.0, 2

node_stack_bottom2 = 0.0, -4.46285, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0.0, 2

The Catalyst's nodes should be:

node_stack_top = 0.0, 0.10819, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 3

node_stack_bottom = 0.0, -1.24048, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0.0, 3

(IMO)

An odd note: Staging the VC-10 on the launchpad ejects the cowling thing... strange.

EDIT: Changing them to isFairing = True seems to stop that.

Very cool work you're doing!

ONE MORE EDIT: Here's a TweakScale config you can include if you're interested: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59567837/VanguardAstrodynamics_TweakScale.cfg

I chose the smaller of the two sizes for the multi-attach engines as the basis for the scaleFactor, so that's arbitrary.

Edited August 3, 2015 by AccidentalDisassembly

[Randazzo]

Nodes and such haven't gotten a housekeeping pass yet. I left them tiny to prevent them overriding each other while testing. They don't necessarily have to be any specific size, but if they are too big then they'll overlap and make attaching a pain in the rear end. The Tethys is intentionally set to attach upside down as it was intended to be used with the lander adapter, which currently has an apparently broken collider. Hopefully adding yet another one will correct it and the attachment direction can be set properly.

Thanks for the feedback guys, it's appreciated!

Edit: And in regards to the memory consumption, all of this is pretty much raw development files. None of the textures are optimized for loading, they're optimized for my viewing ease. heh

Edit2: I've uploaded smaller textures to Github. Medium textures are 512x512 and Low are 256x256.

Edited August 3, 2015 by Randazzo

[Randazzo]

Reworked the Hornet model from the VX series pack. Probably going to touch up the Catalyst a bit as well. Things looked good to me at the time, less so now.

Also have a large 2.5m cluster engine in the works, intended to be more powerful than the mainsail. Got a couple of models together but I'm not overly happy with either. Proving difficult to put one together in such a way that isn't hideous but isn't a clone of something done before.

Edited August 24, 2015 by Randazzo

[Randazzo]

1.2 beta is now available for download from Github - link also in OP

[Randazzo]

Just wondering if there's any interest in this idea before getting too deep in it: SciFi Engines.

By this I mean the sort of thing you see in rather unrealistic depictions of space flight, or perhaps far-future technology. By definition they'd be a little out of place in KSP, and I know some players (Regex's eye just started twitching) will find the concept repulsive. Fusion torch drives, for example.

The basic concept would revolve around a reactor which would require some combination of fuel to generate a unique resource required by the engines. This fuel combination could also be unique, or perhaps stick to a modicum of reality and use Helium-3 and Deuterium. Larger engines would naturally require larger reactors. Ultimately the result would be to have a heavy and expensive, but ludicrously efficient, method of propulsion. These would be unlocked past the current end of the tech tree by adding nodes (and/or CTT integration).

Early look at a Fusion Torch Drive model:

[rasta013]

Personally, I like seeing these things thrown into the end-game CTT tree. There's definitely the subset of players who prefer to keep everything as close to reality as we can but there's also those of us who don't mind occasionally having a bit of willing suspension of disbelief in order to play the game differently. On occasion I use things like ESLD Jump Beacons or RoverDude's Alcubierre Warp Drive and I love using Angel125's Deep Space Exploration Vehicles. All of those mods dip well into the sci-fi arena and lest we not forget, things like EPL while plausible, are still in the arena of sci-fi as far as the real world is concerned. I say go for it. Put out what you like and reality be damned.

[Gaalidas]

I'm liking that new engine model with the nozzle flexing (or whatever it's called. I imagine it almost like "breathing" the way it flexes like a human being's rib-cage when filling the lungs with air.) but I'd also like to see more completion of some of your older projects that we have yet to see be released, such as the conformed solar panels.

[Randazzo]

I'm liking that new engine model with the nozzle flexing (or whatever it's called. I imagine it almost like "breathing" the way it flexes like a human being's rib-cage when filling the lungs with air.) but I'd also like to see more completion of some of your older projects that we have yet to see be released, such as the conformed solar panels.

If I can manage to import the animation into unity without dividing by zero and collapsing the universe (only a slight exaggeration), that'll be a throttle animation with the nozzle opening wider with input.

I could put the panels up on Github this evening. They're done, I just haven't had a pack to release them with. Honestly sort of slipped my mind...

[Dakota2063]

If I may make a suggestion for the Sci-fi engines. They should only really work well in a vacuum, and require alternative engines for getting out of atmo. That said, I would love some engines that run off of a reactor and have large amounts of DV while amnuvering in space. You should also make Large RCS that run off the same principle.

[Gaalidas]

If I can manage to import the animation into unity without dividing by zero and collapsing the universe (only a slight exaggeration), that'll be a throttle animation with the nozzle opening wider with input.

I could put the panels up on Github this evening. They're done, I just haven't had a pack to release them with. Honestly sort of slipped my mind...

Hey, if you do happen to divide by zero, it wouldn't necessarily obliterate all of time and space all at once... well, technically it will happen all at once, but that single moment of time will be shattered and collapse into itself creating a sort of temporal-spacial singularity which will warp the fabric of space-time like a black hole, but reversed. In a black hole, an external viewer would observe that you would never actually reach the point of no return because of the time dilation. In this instance, there would be no outside viewer because all of time and space would be affected, and the closer to the point of impact you are, the less you will be impacted by the effect, thus being able to observe all of space and time collapsing from the furthest reaches of time and space inward toward you. So, in a matter of speaking, at the exact center of the anomalous calculation (your exact location at the time of the division) time and space would continue to pass by at the same rate as always for the entirety of the infinite duration of the space-time life-cycle, at which time (as if "infinity" were a number that could be reached) everything would cease to exist.

Either that or we'll all just suddenly not exist and won't care either way. In theory anyway...

[Randazzo]

Hey, if you do happen to divide by zero, it wouldn't necessarily obliterate all of time and space all at once... well, technically it will happen all at once, but that single moment of time will be shattered and collapse into itself creating a sort of temporal-spacial singularity which will warp the fabric of space-time like a black hole, but reversed. In a black hole, an external viewer would observe that you would never actually reach the point of no return because of the time dilation. In this instance, there would be no outside viewer because all of time and space would be affected, and the closer to the point of impact you are, the less you will be impacted by the effect, thus being able to observe all of space and time collapsing from the furthest reaches of time and space inward toward you. So, in a matter of speaking, at the exact center of the anomalous calculation (your exact location at the time of the division) time and space would continue to pass by at the same rate as always for the entirety of the infinite duration of the space-time life-cycle, at which time (as if "infinity" were a number that could be reached) everything would cease to exist.

Either that or we'll all just suddenly not exist and won't care either way. In theory anyway...

Fortunately the universe survives another day! Got it into Unity, complete with throttle animation.

[Randazzo]

Reactor Concept

[Dakota2063]

Reactor Concept

http://i.imgur.com/OXiWgVI.png

http://i.imgur.com/kPswaoz.png

http://i.imgur.com/Sq1PCPc.png

nice. I like it.

[Randazzo]

nice. I like it.

Thanks! Here it is with the engine, and some texturing.

[Randazzo]

First look at the Plasma engine effects

[Dakota2063]

that is awesome. Love the sound effects

[Randazzo]

Just in case anyone got worried, I am still working on this. It's been a bit more of a challenge to get it balance on the back end than I expected.

LH2/Plasma mode effects:

[Randazzo]

OP updated with some pertinent info

[Olympic1]

On 2-7-2015 at 8:38 AM, Randazzo said:

Due to the licensing of these mods, CKAN will also continue to host them against my wishes. I cannot force them to take them down, therefore they will not do so. The mods availability there does not mean they are supported or in any way change this post.

@Randazzo We don't delete any metadata from CKAN because if we should delete it, it will break the install of everyone who has one of your mods installed. Uninstalling of that mod after the metadata is removed will not work and people  would blame us even though if it was you who asked it. That is the main reason we keep your mods on CKAN.