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[Min KSP: 1.12.2] Pathfinder - Space Camping & Geoscience


Angelo Kerman

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[quote name='EdusacconBR']there will be more jetpacks :D ?[/QUOTE]
Well the original KerbolQuest jetpacks mod had a non-winged jet pack, a rocket pack, and a hang glider. I already have the Outback, which stores stuff, of course. I could see a rocket pack for airless bodies, but probably that's about it. The rocket pack might come with a micro-grabber arm similar to the Buffalo Grabber Arm, and maybe a clamp-o-tron jr compatible docking port, but that will wait until I know what I can do with the JetWing.

Some of my plans depend upon whether or not I can strap the wing to the back of the kerbal and control it like flying a plane. Just adding a sas module and probe core module isn't enough; what happens when you press those wasd keys on EVA is fundamentally different than when flying a plane. I wish I could talk to Mu or HarvestR or somebody on the core dev team who could tell me how to do that. If I am unable to and I'm stuck with the command seat approach then I'll know what I can do with the next pack.
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[quote name='EdusacconBR']Oh, okay, but why dont you talk to Kospy to see if KIS can support something like that?[/QUOTE]
The problem is not with KIS, actually. KIS lets me strap the wing to the back of the kerbal, and treat it like a part, which means that once on the kerbal's back, you can right-click the wing and access its context menu, and it means that PartModules will work fine. The issue is with how KSP handles input to the user. The responses when on EVA are different than the responses when flying a craft. For instance, on EVA, if you press the w key, the kerbal will move forward and play the walk animation. With an aircraft, the plane will pitch down. Throttle controls don't seem to work with a kerbal on EVA either; no z key to max out the throttle, for instance. What I need is the ability to access the fligt control respones of an aircraft while the kerbal is on EVA. I also need the flying kerbal to stay pointed in the right direction with stability assist engaged. And I need to intercept the keypress so that instead of playing the walk animation, the kerbal with JetWing pitches down instead. Honestly I don't know if that is all possible.
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Quick update, get the latest here from [URL="https://kerbalstuff.com/mod/933/Pathfinder"]KerbalStuff[/URL]. I'll have GitHub updated later tonight.

0.9.5 Flight by Erik Groysman
This update has some minor tweaks and bug fixes to the JetWing. It is still experimental but the flight controls are a little easier to use.

JetWing
- When you load the flight scene, the JetWing will look at what fuel you're using and set up the engine mode automatically.
- Improved the jet flame effects for liquid fuel mode.
- You can now re-bind the hover control keys. Simply right-click on the wing, click "Show GUI" to display the on-screen hover controls, and click the gear button to display the hover controls keyboard mapper.
- Moved center of thrust a little lower to make the wing a bit easier to fly.
- JetWing's art assets and config files are now in the Buffalo/Parts/JetWing folder. You can safely delete all other folders in the Buffalo/Parts folder as well as the Buffalo/Spaces folder and Buffalo/Assets folder if all you want is the JetWing.

Outback
- The Outback's art assets and part file are now self-contained in the Buffalo/Parts/Outback folder.
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Finally got opportunity to try out new toys and have some feedback for you, Angel.
 

Really glad you liked the idea of sturdier wheel option, and the new m1a2 do offer excellent planetside upgrade. They also have several issues - sharp turns at moderate-to-high speeds may kick the vehicle into the air. On one such occasion front right wheel caused Buffalo to do pretty impressive flip, end over end, which ended with aforementioned wheel damaged during landing. After attempting to fix damaged wheel, it ended up looking like this

CfH8AaD.png

 

dRRaS8s.png
 

Now JetWing is AWESOME! Despite coding limitations you encountered it turned out pretty damn stable and easy to use. The only problem with it is difficulty in keeping it pointed upwards when on the ground, since kickstand seems completely useless at the moment. Is it possible to make JetWing kas-attachable to the ground? That would make assembly and fueling much easier.

Also, flying around newly grown carbon-fibre wings reminded me about another vehicle that might fit well with Pathfinder: ATV or even some sort of space bike/trike. So Buffalo covers cargo and crew transportation, JetWing gives measure of aerial mobility, but there is still bit of a gap without nimble scout/light utility single(two?) seater vehicle, especially when bringing along entire Buffalo is not an option or simply excessive.  Imagine monoprop fueled ATV-type vehicle controlled via command seat and maybe having platform for 1 container module - that would certainly  help during base construction, or low-medium endurance barebones space bike for prospecting and sample gathering.


 


 

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1 hour ago, Rho-Mu 34 said:

Finally got opportunity to try out new toys and have some feedback for you, Angel.
 

Really glad you liked the idea of sturdier wheel option, and the new m1a2 do offer excellent planetside upgrade. They also have several issues - sharp turns at moderate-to-high speeds may kick the vehicle into the air. On one such occasion front right wheel caused Buffalo to do pretty impressive flip, end over end, which ended with aforementioned wheel damaged during landing. After attempting to fix damaged wheel, it ended up looking like this

CfH8AaD.png

 

dRRaS8s.png
 

Now JetWing is AWESOME! Despite coding limitations you encountered it turned out pretty damn stable and easy to use. The only problem with it is difficulty in keeping it pointed upwards when on the ground, since kickstand seems completely useless at the moment. Is it possible to make JetWing kas-attachable to the ground? That would make assembly and fueling much easier.

Also, flying around newly grown carbon-fibre wings reminded me about another vehicle that might fit well with Pathfinder: ATV or even some sort of space bike/trike. So Buffalo covers cargo and crew transportation, JetWing gives measure of aerial mobility, but there is still bit of a gap without nimble scout/light utility single(two?) seater vehicle, especially when bringing along entire Buffalo is not an option or simply excessive.  Imagine monoprop fueled ATV-type vehicle controlled via command seat and maybe having platform for 1 container module - that would certainly  help during base construction, or low-medium endurance barebones space bike for prospecting and sample gathering.


 


 

Tuning the wheels is going to be an ongoing issue as it is a black art. I wish I knew what settings were used on the stock wheels as that would be a great guide for me. I am hoping that when 1.1 drops it will be easier to figure out what traction values to use. I might create a set of exprimental wheels with various settings and let people try them out and see what works.

The best way to keep the JetWing upright right now is to board the wing, extend the kickstand, turn on SAS, and rotate until vertical. On many occasions I've been able to land vertically and, with SAS turned on, leave the command seat, and the wing stays upright, so I don't consider the kickstand to be useless. Bolting the wing to the ground would be tricky but maybe I can build a "coat rack" that you can bolt to the ground, and then you'd attach the wing to it.

A mini rover sounds like an interesting idea. I could see half-sized Grizzly wheels attached to a chassis and some kind of external command seat variant, plus the generator that I have planned, which indeed runs on monopropellant. For now you can get away with a 2u chassis, the Mountain Goat or Grizzly wheels, an external command seat and a trailer hitch to help you climb up.

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Also, forgot to mention that the JetWing has really good range right now on Duna and Kerbin, and that may change. On Kerbin, I flew up to 15k altitude and performed a transcontinental flight! That's a bit much. The amount of fuel it carries is right where I want it but the range needs to drop. I'm thinking the isp needs to be abould half what it is now. This is where I need test pilots willing to tweak config files and report their results. :)

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Hi Angel,

 

Thanks again for a great mod.  My KSP experience right now is based around pathfinder.

I am having a small issue where after I restart a saved game, I lose the resource percentage listings in the Show Geology lab in the ponderosa.  Yes I have my survey probe active and show overlay enabled.  The only way I can get the resource numbers back is to inflate a new ponderosa.

 

Thanks

 

 

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2 hours ago, Buzz313th said:

Hi Angel,

 

Thanks again for a great mod.  My KSP experience right now is based around pathfinder.

I am having a small issue where after I restart a saved game, I lose the resource percentage listings in the Show Geology lab in the ponderosa.  Yes I have my survey probe active and show overlay enabled.  The only way I can get the resource numbers back is to inflate a new ponderosa.

 

Thanks

 

 

Do you have a screenshot? I've never encountered this issue. What mods do you have installed, like SCANsat and such. There migjt me an interaction issue going on.

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1 hour ago, EdusacconBR said:

yea, but its pretty much impossible to take these to anywhere else without SpaceY parts :P

In terms of Pathfinder, a large dome like this would probably need to be built on site and pretty much be a permanent fixture. I'm not sure where it would fit in the Habitation, Science, or Industry domains that the mod has; maybe it can do all three, giving you the ability to configure it as a science module, habitation module, or industrial module. The plugin can easily handle that capability. I'll think about it, but it'll be Phase 2/3 at the earliest- I have to finish up Phase 1 first.

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5 hours ago, Angel-125 said:

Do you have a screenshot? I've never encountered this issue. What mods do you have installed, like SCANsat and such. There migjt me an interaction issue going on.

Heres a screen...  Notice there is not any percentage values for the resources..  Yes I have a stock survey scanner up and scanning.  I only saw the percentages after I inflated the ponderosa and lost the values after I came back to the saved game.

aN6MUwHhttp://imgur.com/aN6MUwH

 

Heres a list of my mods..

Stock upgraded jet engines

Distant Object

EVE

Firespitter

KAS

KER

KIS

KOS

Mechjeb

Final Frontier

PlanetShine

Latest stock bug fix

Texture replacer

TACLS

Universal storage

OSE

Pathfinder

 

I thought I saw a post somewhere that somebody had reported the same thing.

 

Thanks

 

 

 

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On 1/12/2015 6:49:53, Angel-125 said:

Tuning the wheels is going to be an ongoing issue as it is a black art. I wish I knew what settings were used on the stock wheels as that would be a great guide for me. I am hoping that when 1.1 drops it will be easier to figure out what traction values to use. I might create a set of exprimental wheels with various settings and let people try them out and see what works.

If you take a look at my blender .mu addon, you will find wheel.py. It can be used (standalone) to inspect and set wheel parameters, though apparently 1.0 added means to do so via cfg files.

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4 hours ago, taniwha said:

If you take a look at my blender .mu addon, you will find wheel.py. It can be used (standalone) to inspect and set wheel parameters, though apparently 1.0 added means to do so via cfg files.

Oh, interesting, I'll definitely take a look. Thanks for pointing that out. :) Does it tell you the Unity wheel collider parameters?

Edit: Just looked at the python script, it does, it does! :) Now, how to use it?

Edited by Angel-125
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On ‎12‎/‎1‎/‎2015‎ ‎6‎:‎11‎:‎01‎, Angel-125 said:

Hm. Ok, This is definitely something I cannot reproduce so I need your help. Can you download this plugin and see if it helps any? Thanks. :)

Just confirming...   The DLL plugin goes into the Gamedata/WildblueIndustries/Pathfinder ...   right?

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