[WIP][1.8.x] SSTULabs - Low Part Count Solutions (Orbiters, Landers, Lifters) - Dev Thread [11-18-18]

[Shadowmage]

 

'Finished' MCB-A geometry; unwrapped, UV'd, and baked.  Shown with flat diffuse AO bake texture only; geometry is final, texture has not yet been started.

Now I get the fun task of setting up colliders and re-exporting through Unity.  Not terrible, just time consuming....

Should have the finished geometry in this weekends' update, but textures may or may not be in place (will at least have the flat diffuse/AO as a texture).

[ComatoseJedi]

What kind of texture did you have in mind for these? Mylar wrap? Stainless steel? PVC White? lol. I'm from Georgia, where PVC is an all around piece of construction material. 

[AliceM]

On 2016/6/15 at 5:36 AM, Shadowmage said:

Preliminary geometry for the skeletal adapters, both short and medium length variants:

Left-to-right'ish are 3:1, 2:1, 3:2, and 4:3 adapter ratios.  Considering making a 5:2, 5:3, and 5:4 ratio adapters as well, but will have to do a bit of math on them to see how usable they would be.

Also testing out a very basic strut setup on the far-left one (3:1 short); don't really like it though, so will likely go with the other layout shown for that size.

 

Will probably be going with these, with perhaps minor modifications.  My aim is to get them unwrapped and at least have a basic texture on all of the MCB-A parts this week.

Have also dropped a note in the Near-Future thread regarding use of the Near-Future form-factor for the octo- and hexa- truss systems; hopefully I'll be able to start putting together a few parts from those soon as well (undecided on the module to use or the desired functionality; most were intended to have integrated features rather than just be stand-alone trusses... but some stand-alone structural parts may come first).

Is it possible those adapter cloud be use on fairing base? or at least a stand-alone part? it's will be a nice payload adapter.

[plausse]

I installed this when it was in its infancy and I got more confused than impressed. I then installed it again a couple of versions ago - and in my humble opinion it is amazing. KSP is Lego.. this is stretchy Lego that bends. Just extraordinary - and it's made my rockets prettier and more filled with purpose ever since.

I don't have real fuels (I do prefer it, but I find I then have to increase scales and then that everything takes ages..) but still some engines use real fuel hypergolics, which I have no tanks for. Is this intentional, a known bug, or most likely my own fault? 

[ComatoseJedi]

3 minutes ago, plausse said:

I don't have real fuels (I do prefer it, but I find I then have to increase scales and then that everything takes ages..) but still some engines use real fuel hypergolics, which I have no tanks for. Is this intentional, a known bug, or most likely my own fault? 

This is intentional. Shadowmage change up for the hypergolic thrusters/engines to use real fuel fuels. All the configurations for the fuel is included in the CRP. The only time you'd need the actual real fuels mod is if you plan to use RO. 

[plausse]

Just now, ComatoseJedi said:

This is intentional. Shadowmage change up for the hypergolic thrusters/engines to use real fuel fuels. All the configurations for the fuel is included in the CRP. The only time you'd need the actual real fuels mod is if you plan to use RO. 

Thanks!

[ComatoseJedi]

Just now, plausse said:

Thanks!

No problem. I could see how this would confuse people that played with this mod before and come back to actual hypergolic fuels from real fuels. But, this was fairly recently done, so you're sorting it out just like I am. I am kinda glad he did this. It brings it tad more realistic for replica builds. 

[GoldForest]

@Shadowmage So I talked to hraban, Contares creator, and he says that the RP/SS is not a bug. He says he plans on removing all stock plumes from his mod and go directly for RP/SS.

[blowfish]

5 hours ago, GoldForest said:

@Shadowmage So I talked to hraban, Contares creator, and he says that the RP/SS is not a bug. He says he plans on removing all stock plumes from his mod and go directly for RP/SS.

Well, it's still generally bad practice to have FOR[OtherMod] in your mod anyway, unless you're trying to emulate the presence of that mod.

[Shadowmage]

14 hours ago, AliceM said:

Is it possible those adapter cloud be use on fairing base? or at least a stand-alone part? it's will be a nice payload adapter.

I'm generally not in the practice of making stand-alone parts, as they actively work against the theme of the mod.

With that said, each of the models will be a separate .mu file; so if -someone- wanted to make individual part.cfg files for them, they can.  I will not be doing so however.

And... I already have fairings with included payload adapters (SC-GEN-FR-XXX).

[Nertea]

21 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

 

'Finished' MCB-A geometry; unwrapped, UV'd, and baked.  Shown with flat diffuse AO bake texture only; geometry is final, texture has not yet been started.

Now I get the fun task of setting up colliders and re-exporting through Unity.  Not terrible, just time consuming....

Should have the finished geometry in this weekends' update, but textures may or may not be in place (will at least have the flat diffuse/AO as a texture).

Well damn. I have practically exactly this sitting in front of my for NFC right now. Those look great!

Edited June 16, 2016 by Nertea

[Shadowmage]

4 hours ago, Nertea said:

Well damn. I have practically exactly this sitting in front of my for NFC right now. Those look great!

Thanks

Was bound to happen as there is a distinct lack of saddle-trusses available through other mods (that I've seen anyhow).  I'm sure that whenever you get them ready they will still be put to good use; nothing wrong with having options / alternatives

[StickyScissors]

A question, if i may. Are there any current or future plans for modular solar panels, if that's even possible?

For example, choosing how many panels on a fold-out-able solar panel part? Or the size of the panels like height and width?

[GoldForest]

8 hours ago, blowfish said:

Well, it's still generally bad practice to have FOR[OtherMod] in your mod anyway, unless you're trying to emulate the presence of that mod.

Tell that to him. 

[rasta013]

2 hours ago, GoldForest said:

Tell that to him. 

Perhaps Sarbian could go beat him about the head and neck profusely with the MM docs?  

[AliceM]

9 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

I'm generally not in the practice of making stand-alone parts, as they actively work against the theme of the mod.

With that said, each of the models will be a separate .mu file; so if -someone- wanted to make individual part.cfg files for them, they can.  I will not be doing so however.

And... I already have fairings with included payload adapters (SC-GEN-FR-XXX).

what i mean was using those as model switch option for (SC-GEN-FR-XXX). right now just 4:3, it will be nice have something like 3:1, 3:2 and 2:1.

[GoldForest]

@Shadowmage Are you taking suggestions for new parts right now or not until your official release?

[Sudragon]

15 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

Thanks

Was bound to happen as there is a distinct lack of saddle-trusses available through other mods (that I've seen anyhow).  I'm sure that whenever you get them ready they will still be put to good use; nothing wrong with having options / alternatives

I may be wrong, but if you have Nertea's NearFuture pack and Shadowmage' SSTU, you can drop all of Squads tankage and engines...

[Shadowmage]

11 hours ago, AliceM said:

what i mean was using those as model switch option for (SC-GEN-FR-XXX). right now just 4:3, it will be nice have something like 3:1, 3:2 and 2:1.

Ahh... that... maybe.  Not anytime soon, as those modules currently do not support model-switching... but perhaps in the future.  I've always found the fairing payload adapter to work fine for all of my uses, so having different ratios/adapters is merely something that I've never considered or needed.

 

6 hours ago, GoldForest said:

@Shadowmage Are you taking suggestions for new parts right now or not until your official release?

Sure... though it doesn't mean that I'll have time to do it, even if it is an excellent idea.

[Jimbodiah]

psssst... station parts

[Shadowmage]

Hint... I need working wheels....

I won't be doing anything else major until wheels are working, in one form or another.  And sadly, I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to pull that off... so there might not be anything else; this might be the end of the road for my KSP modding.  Unity sure as hell isn't going to fix the problem; they are going along just ignoring the whole thing... the Unity devs response on the Unity forums are... not instilling me with any confidence.  They seem to have no interest in fixing it, and won't even acknowledge that there is a problem.... even though there is a 40 page long thread on how terrible their new wheel implementation is... they just keep going on in ignorance.

If I can't get wheels working, I'm afraid I'll be done modding KSP fairly soon.  I can't actually play KSP without wheels and landing legs; and if I can't play KSP, I have no reason to be modding it.  The one thing that I need solved in order to use the u5 wheel colliders is the arbitrary 'wheel colliders suspension axis must be aligned with the rigidbody Y+ axis'.  If they had not put that retarded system in place, this whole thing would not be an issue, and I would be able to figure out some way to make the u5 wheel colliders work.  Sadly, as long as that arbitrary limitation is in place... they are completely unusable for my purposes.

Alternatively what I need for the custom solution is the ability to stop a wheel collider from sliding along the ground when it shouldn't be, and I need the ability to stop the wheel from over-compressing its suspension.  Basically, I need access to the low level PhysX backend data and physics update sub-steps... none of which are available to user-created scripts.

 

So,... if you -really- want to see more/new parts, bug Unity to fix their garbage of a wheel system so that I can stop wasting my time trying to 'fix' it.  Perhaps they'll 'fix' their garbage if they receive enough hate-mail; I wouldn't get my hopes up though.

[Jimbodiah]

Sounds like War Gaming that have just closed an almost 900 page thread on how broken their MM is. Seems a lot of companies these days only care about getting as much revenue as quickly as possible, and not about the quality of their product.

I really don't need wheels in KSP, I almost never build rovers or planes, and stock KSP has decent landing legs for what I am doing. My main parts concern are lifters, landers, stations and satellites.

[Calvin_Maclure]

32 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

Hint... I need working wheels....

I won't be doing anything else major until wheels are working, in one form or another.  And sadly, I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to pull that off... so there might not be anything else; this might be the end of the road for my KSP modding.  Unity sure as hell isn't going to fix the problem; they are going along just ignoring the whole thing... the Unity devs response on the Unity forums are... not instilling me with any confidence.  They seem to have no interest in fixing it, and won't even acknowledge that there is a problem.... even though there is a 40 page long thread on how terrible their new wheel implementation is... they just keep going on in ignorance.

If I can't get wheels working, I'm afraid I'll be done modding KSP fairly soon.  I can't actually play KSP without wheels and landing legs; and if I can't play KSP, I have no reason to be modding it.  The one thing that I need solved in order to use the u5 wheel colliders is the arbitrary 'wheel colliders suspension axis must be aligned with the rigidbody Y+ axis'.  If they had not put that retarded system in place, this whole thing would not be an issue, and I would be able to figure out some way to make the u5 wheel colliders work.  Sadly, as long as that arbitrary limitation is in place... they are completely unusable for my purposes.

Alternatively what I need for the custom solution is the ability to stop a wheel collider from sliding along the ground when it shouldn't be, and I need the ability to stop the wheel from over-compressing its suspension.  Basically, I need access to the low level PhysX backend data and physics update sub-steps... none of which are available to user-created scripts.

 

So,... if you -really- want to see more/new parts, bug Unity to fix their garbage of a wheel system so that I can stop wasting my time trying to 'fix' it.  Perhaps they'll 'fix' their garbage if they receive enough hate-mail; I wouldn't get my hopes up though.

Id hate to see you go, but I get your grief...
 

[Shadowmage]

15 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

Sounds like War Gaming that have just closed an almost 900 page thread on how broken their MM is. Seems a lot of companies these days only care about getting as much revenue as quickly as possible, and not about the quality of their product.

I really don't need wheels in KSP, I almost never build rovers or planes, and stock KSP has decent landing legs for what I am doing. My main parts concern are lifters, landers, stations and satellites.

Sadly, I do need rovers and airplanes; both of which need wheels in order to function (well, definitely rovers; airplanes could technically work with skids of some sort for takeoff and parachutes for landing; but is less than optimal).

Landing legs -- honestly, rigid animation based landing legs would be workable enough for me.  Mostly they need to be able to deploy from a compact state.  Suspension would be nice, but generally not 'needed' given how softly I do my landings (<3 m/s, often <1 m/s).

Wheels though... there is no simple alternative.  They just have to work.

 

12 minutes ago, Calvin_Maclure said:

Id hate to see you go, but I get your grief...
 

I wouldn't get too concerned right now;  I've got a bit of patience left... but is not infinite.  If I still can't get it figured out in a month or two... that might be cause for concern.

 

I'll likely just go with whatever I have done and working as far as wheels are concerned.  The component that I've been writing / working on is... mostly functional, but not perfect.  It might be 'functional enough' for general use, with some caveats.  I really won't know until I can start integrating it into the in-game partmodules (which I intend on working on a bit this weekend... to try and get the shuttle parts working again).

 

What is really frustrating me about this all... is that this is not a problem I should even need to solve, nor am I by any means actually qualified to be solving it.  Its a bit like being tasked with doing a full engine rebuild on a car... with only a crescent wrench and no assembly diagrams and no knowledge of the specific engine.  Unity should not have released such an incompatible and limited use wheel system (compared to their previous implementation), period.

[_Augustus_]

1 hour ago, Shadowmage said:

Sadly, I do need rovers and airplanes; both of which need wheels in order to function (well, definitely rovers; airplanes could technically work with skids of some sort for takeoff and parachutes for landing; but is less than optimal).

Landing legs -- honestly, rigid animation based landing legs would be workable enough for me.  Mostly they need to be able to deploy from a compact state.  Suspension would be nice, but generally not 'needed' given how softly I do my landings (<3 m/s, often <1 m/s).

Wheels though... there is no simple alternative.  They just have to work.

 

I wouldn't get too concerned right now;  I've got a bit of patience left... but is not infinite.  If I still can't get it figured out in a month or two... that might be cause for concern.

 

I'll likely just go with whatever I have done and working as far as wheels are concerned.  The component that I've been writing / working on is... mostly functional, but not perfect.  It might be 'functional enough' for general use, with some caveats.  I really won't know until I can start integrating it into the in-game partmodules (which I intend on working on a bit this weekend... to try and get the shuttle parts working again).

 

What is really frustrating me about this all... is that this is not a problem I should even need to solve, nor am I by any means actually qualified to be solving it.  Its a bit like being tasked with doing a full engine rebuild on a car... with only a crescent wrench and no assembly diagrams and no knowledge of the specific engine.  Unity should not have released such an incompatible and limited use wheel system (compared to their previous implementation), period.

Landing skids like those on Dyna-Soar would be awesome in this mod.