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

[pheenix99]

Installed last night and noticed a good number of parts were invisible.... 

[Krux]

Yeah, all engines are invisible or have no models. I tried unlocking them all in career and activating all upgrades in sandbox, but nothing worked. Also, the solar panels and the new tank textures look so dope!

[akron]

On 10/11/2016 at 0:09 PM, Shadowmage said:

Initial selection of blanket style solar panels.  Had a few more variants planned, and I may still do them, but perhaps not immediately. 

And here are the updated/retouched rigid solar panel models (showing the panel back-side coloration, don't think I have shown it yet):

Going to clean up these a bit more (some minor geometry bits need UV'd and textured), and then will be spending the rest of the week on general cleanup and bugfixing work.  Aiming to have a fairly stable/usable initial 1.2 release.

I could stare at those for hours. Lots of nuances in the deployment animations. Kudos.

I am wondering, how did you rig the blanket deployment animation?

[Shadowmage]

19 hours ago, Pappystein said:

And they do not exist in the VAB or SPH...

IE no models to place

 

IS there supposed to be a Texture Zip for this update?

 

Nope, no additional texture set .zip anymore.  I rolled all of the main textures into the distribution.  There may be an alternate texture set in the future with the 'missing' ones, but they'll need some reworking, and I'm trying to see if Jose wants to host it with his Nova pack (as the textures don't change, there is no reason for me to re-zip and re-upload it with every SSTU release).

 

19 hours ago, tater said:

In career mode, the engines have no icons in the R&D facility.

In the VAB (either mode) there are no icons for engines.

Interesting... pretty sure there were all present during my testing yesterday.  Though.... come to think of it... I think my dev environment is still using one of the first 1.2-pre builds... so who knows, stock may have broken something.

Will take a look at this this afternoon/evening, and see what I can do about fixing it.  Likely a simple error preventing the plugin from loading them properly.  Is there anything in the log (it would be during the part compiling stuff)?

 

18 hours ago, tater said:

I love the spherical tanks.

Now I need a large, round crew compartment

The only issue I see with the MFT-S is that the outer structure is not aligned such that the frameworks line up with the default orthogonal locations. Ie: the vertical structures are rotationally offset a few degrees. The MCB-A is aligned properly. You'll notice if you place one against the other.

 

Noted, should be easy enough to fix that one up.  I likely forgot to reset the rotation on the models before exporting, or Unity did one of its derpy-moment things that it does occasionally.

 

20 hours ago, tater said:

New panels look incredible, no issues that I have seen yet.

Trivial, housecleaning issues:

Solar panels are still in the old "Utility" category, not the new, "Electrical" one.

The SSTU HGA needs to be moved to "Communication" as well.

RBDC needs to move to "Coupling," as do the DP-0P and DP-1P.

Yeah, silly stock.. they added those categories after I was already 'done' with the 1.2 updates.  I never even updated my dev environment to a build that has them.  No clue what the category names are supposed to be (hint, the config names are often different than the displayed names, so I can't just use whatever is listed in the editor....).

As others have stated, a PR or at least an issue on GitHub with the details would be appreciated.

 

45 minutes ago, akron said:

I could stare at those for hours. Lots of nuances in the deployment animations. Kudos.

I am wondering, how did you rig the blanket deployment animation?

Scaling and translation.  Had to set blender to 'linear extrapolation' to make the scaling line up with the translation bits.

I experimented with blend-shapes but couldn't get those working with multiple frames very well (likely could have worked, still learning how to use those things).  Skinned mesh renderer would have required so many bones on those things it would be silly.  But it turned out that the old classic method worked the best.

On Saturday, October 15, 2016 at 0:37 PM, JoseEduardo said:

@Jimbodiah

http://imgur.com/a/Ba4mn

Engines sold separately (but they need Aerozine50 and NTO)

I might make a second Apollo variant with these panels in X like Orion, as I don't know if I can include two configs for the same solar panel on the same part (@Shadowmage, halp), and possibly make a version of the Apollo SM with some panels and a Block III/IV/V from @CobaltWolf's Apollo SM, in these two last cases, engines included

(btw, there's an Apollo somewhere in that album)

Hmm... the current method for having a separate set of solar options using the same models would be to define a second SSTU_MODEL definition for those panels.

Should be an easier method though.  I can de-link the model-name from the GUI name and allow them to be specified separately.  So you would specify name = 'whatToDisplayInGUI' and modelName = 'nameOfSSTU_MODEL'.

Indeed, have just updated the code to allow for separate 'modelName'.  Defaults to whatever the 'name' is if modelName is not specified (so existing configs will not break).  Will be available with the next release (probably this evening).

[tater]

@Shadowmage, I'll drop the log in the github issue for you.

Log uploaded to github.

[tater]

I threw an issue in there with a list of the category names (copied from the cfgs) for you.

[Shadowmage]

38 minutes ago, tater said:

@Shadowmage, I'll drop the log in the github issue for you.

Log uploaded to github.

Fixed in dev

 

28 minutes ago, tater said:

I threw an issue in there with a list of the category names (copied from the cfgs) for you.

Also fixed in dev code.

 

^^  That is what including proper information/logs can do -- makes fixing things much faster and less of a guessing game.  Tater happened to provide all of the information needed for me to fix those problems without me needing to have access to the KSP data files or needing to launch the game.

[JoseEduardo]

you probably already fixed it, but yeah, engines are gone for me too, no engine show up, not even the extra ones I converted, they are invisible like when you have a wrong/missing SSTU_MODEL name on the station configs

as for the tanks, I'll take a look at the extra ones and have them included in the Nova pack

[Shadowmage]

14 minutes ago, JoseEduardo said:

you probably already fixed it, but yeah, engines are gone for me too, no engine show up, not even the extra ones I converted, they are invisible like when you have a wrong/missing SSTU_MODEL name on the station configs

as for the tanks, I'll take a look at the extra ones and have them included in the Nova pack

Re: Engines -- Indeed, I had fubar'd some of the configs for the mounts/layouts.  Have fixed it up in dev code and will be publishing an updated release here in an hour or so.  Will also include an option for your 'multiple solar panel variants' problem.

[JoseEduardo]

"problem"

[NateDaBeast]

1 hour ago, Shadowmage said:

Re: Engines -- Indeed, I had fubar'd some of the configs for the mounts/layouts.  Have fixed it up in dev code and will be publishing an updated release here in an hour or so.  Will also include an option for your 'multiple solar panel variants' problem.

 

I'm eagerly awaiting for this update.

[Shadowmage]

Updated 1.2 testing release is available:

https://github.com/shadowmage45/SSTULabs/releases/tag/0.5.33.127

Fixes up the missing engines, misaligned spherical tanks, and fixes the categories for a few parts.

[NateDaBeast]

3 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

Updated 1.2 testing release is available:

https://github.com/shadowmage45/SSTULabs/releases/tag/0.5.33.127

Fixes up the missing engines, misaligned spherical tanks, and fixes the categories for a few parts.

 

Downloading right now.

Thanks !!!

[GoldForest]

Is the SSTU -ST-GEN - DSP-DOS-T solar panel supposed to be broken? One of the inner panels is rotated about two to four degrees outward while the others stick straight out.

[JoseEduardo]

18 minutes ago, GoldForest said:

Is the SSTU -ST-GEN - DSP-DOS-T solar panel supposed to be broken? One of the inner panels is rotated about two to four degrees outward while the others stick straight out.

just checked it, when it deploys it shakes weirdly and then remains tilted once the animation ends

[Temeter]

Btw, those menus for nose/foot adapters, container customization... Honestly, sometimes I'm almost shocked how much brillant stuff this mod does.

On 16.10.2016 at 8:25 PM, tater said:

I cannot change any tank diameters... I'm in sandbox. Pure SSTU install.

Diameter right-click exists in the MUS tanks (not int he MFT tanks at all), but is disabled. 

So on the MUS tanks, they appear at their default diameter, but when you right-click them they drop to 1.25m.

 

NEVERMIND.

You'd think that the new "upgrade" behavior would be default in Sandbox (apply all upgrades), but it's not. Make sure to check that box for testing!

Good find, I've also thought I just encountered a bug.

I do agree tho. If you have all technology available, then it does make sense to include all updates.

Edited October 18, 2016 by Temeter

[Jimbodiah]

Spoiler

New parts are looking good, Mage!

Edited October 18, 2016 by Jimbodiah

[Temeter]

EDIT2: Nevermind this then.^^

EDIT: I got it. You rounded real engines down to about ~41.1% thrust. Seems fine for lifter engines, but it can be a problem for orbital engines. IRL those engines are of course super weak, but in KSP you got a lot shorter orbits and less time for burns. Causes a slight problem in pre-configured lifters, similar to the upper stages.

-------------------

Small feedback:  I think the orion service module is a bit weak. Only manages 11kn, which is 0.09 t/w (with orion capsule), too weak for anything but long, high orbit interplanetary burns. It's actually noticeable weaker than the SM's own forward rcs thrust.

One way would be to go with more realistic thrust, which is probably about 26.7, since this service module will use leftover Space Shuttles OMS. Would be the realism option. Purely gameplay and KSP wise I think it could even go 2 times that, especially considering this is a planetary engine that can go to the mun.

Edited October 18, 2016 by Temeter

[Jimbodiah]

That was discussed before, but the thrust is scaled down the same as the other engines; the 27kN is real-world thrust. But this is why we have MM patches

[Temeter]

5 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

That was discussed before, but the thrust is scaled down the same as the other engines; the 27kN is real-world thrust. But this is why we have MM patches

You just ninja'd my eddit, I've done the math myself and found the multiplier.

I went for the creative solution.

Spoiler

 

Edited October 18, 2016 by Temeter

[Jimbodiah]

I'm too lazy for that.

@PART[SSTU-SC-C-SM]:NEEDS[SSTU]:AFTER[SSTU]
{
    @MODULE[ModuleEnginesFX]
    	{maxThrust *= 5}
}

 

[Temeter]

Seems like I found an actual bug now:

When you switch a standard tank to 0.25 or 0.75m, then body type and v scale vanish. Options still seems to get applied if you changed those values at other sizes (at least cry tank type, cry frame switched back to cryo normal).

18 minutes ago, Jimbodiah said:

I'm too lazy for that.

@PART[SSTU-SC-C-SM]:NEEDS[SSTU]:AFTER[SSTU]
{
    @MODULE[ModuleEnginesFX]
    	{maxThrust *= 5}
}

 

Nice xD

I think I'm fine with my solutions, tho. Unified fuels means you can stick almost every hypergolic engine besides it.

Edited October 18, 2016 by Temeter

[tater]

heheh...

Edited December 19, 2017 by tater

[Temeter]

So much for low part solutions.

[tater]

16 parts, and 12 are the landing gear

Oh, wait... not 16. 17 parts, PER LEG. Ouch!

 

Edited October 18, 2016 by tater