[WIP] Coatl Aerospace ProbesPlus Dev Thread [Beta] 10/19/2020 (1.8-1.10)

[akron]

On 3/27/2016 at 1:01 AM, Table said:

amazing. *presses download link*

Thank you!!! Would you mind downloading again because...

Probes Plus! Beta 0.12

Requires: Dmagic Orbital Science(For science experiments to work), DMagic ScienceAnimate (included)

DOWNLOAD - Game save-breaking!

New dev release available! I ran into a lot of issues that took me more time than I expected thus I could not make as much progress as I wanted. I am releasing this patch because I am not sure how long it will take me for the science parts, which will be the focus of the next release. There are a couple of new parts included which have not previewed before in my my dev blogs. Look for the new Mars Odyssey-inspired solar panels, accelerometer stock experiment (WIP texture), and startrackers (though I am re-using Barquetta's model for them)  Thank you for testing. Spread the word!

Changelog:

Spoiler

-DMagicScienceAnimate is now a pre-requisite, but is included
-Added new parts:

• CA-Q02-M 'Barquetta' probe body
• CA-A100 Small Dish Antenna (Ulysses)
• CA-A10 Small folding antenna (Based on ARSAT-1)
• CA-A01 Ground-plane "TV" antenna
• CA-A02 Cone antenna
• CA-A06 Stick antenna for quetzal (Pioneer)
• CA-E100 and CA-E100-SV Mariner solar panels
• CA-E200 Odyssey solar panels
• CA-RW1a Xsmall reaction wheel (Same model as RW1)
• CA-SC103 Accelerometer (Stock science, based on Maven)
• CA-ACS 'Startrack' (Startrackers)

-Corrected attachment node orientation on the R8200 RTG
-Improved the torque of the CA-RW3 to 1.7 on all axis
-Moved CA-AACS to the Electronics tech tree node
-Improved CA-AACS to SAS lvl 2
-Fixed CA-SC102 Barometer animation by using DMagicScienceAnimate
-Added several new descriptions to parts that lacked them
-Texture tweaks

EDIT: Known Issues:

- CA-R3900 RTG animation is slightly jumpy
- CA-R3900 RTG node for the magnetometer is oriented straight up, instead of an angle
- CA-A01 antenna has an extra "deploy experiment" button in the right-click menu (From DMagicScienceAnimate)

Edited March 28, 2016 by akron

[VenomousRequiem]

Ahhh, Akron... the bane of my sleep schedule... Just about to go to bed, but I had to play with this first!

Everything is wonderful, but I see you didn't keep my RP config for the Nerva.

[akron]

2 minutes ago, VenomousRequiem said:

Ahhh, Akron... the bane of my sleep schedule... Just about to go to bed, but I had to play with this first!

Everything is wonderful, but I see you didn't keep my RP config for the Nerva.

The Nerva got included on accident! Sorry! Your RP config is in another folder. My bad, I'm fixing that right now

[akron]

 

Nuclear HT Engine has been released!

 

I have been working exclusively on ProbesPlus and HT was pretty much done so I went ahead and released it. Available in Spacedock

[hraban]

Hey,

nice new parts. Only the goldfoil look's now uglyer ever. The new small antenna-parts and the backside of the solar-panels needs more detailed texture.

[akron]

3 hours ago, hraban said:

Hey,

nice new parts. Only the goldfoil look's now uglyer ever. The new small antenna-parts and the backside of the solar-panels needs more detailed texture.

I'll see what I can do on the next release! The foil should be easy to fix. Idk about the solar panel back. The real life one is just as plain so I was uninspired 

[hraban]

2 minutes ago, akron said:

I'll see what I can do on the next release! The foil should be easy to fix. Idk about the solar panel back. The real life one is just as plain so I was uninspired 

A few sheet bumps or rivet heads would enhance the back. Less self-promotion, so abandon the logo would also be appropriate, otherwise the impression you had created inferiority complex

[akron]

2 minutes ago, hraban said:

A few sheet bumps or rivet heads would enhance the back. Less self-promotion, so abandon the logo would also be appropriate, otherwise the impression you had created inferiority complex

Do mean like the back of the mariner solar panels? The reason I put the logo  is to emulate what a real company would. I've used it less on the new parts.

[NateDaBeast]

8 hours ago, akron said:

Thank you!!! Would you mind downloading again because...

Probes Plus! Beta 0.12

Requires: Dmagic Orbital Science, DMagic ScienceAnimate (included)

DOWNLOAD - Game save-breaking!

New dev release available! I ran into a lot of issues that took me more time than I expected thus I could not make as much progress as I wanted. I am releasing this patch because I am not sure how long it will take me for the science parts, which will be the focus of the next release. There are a couple of new parts included which have not previewed before in my my dev blogs. Look for the new Mars Odyssey-inspired solar panels, accelerometer stock experiment (WIP texture), and startrackers (though I am re-using Barquetta's model for them)  Thank you for testing. Spread the word!

Changelog:

  Reveal hidden contents

-DMagicScienceAnimate is now a pre-requisite, but is included
-Added new parts:

• CA-Q02-M 'Barquetta' probe body
• CA-A100 Small Dish Antenna (Ulysses)
• CA-A10 Small folding antenna (Based on ARSAT-1)
• CA-A01 Ground-plane "TV" antenna
• CA-A02 Cone antenna
• CA-A06 Stick antenna for quetzal (Pioneer)
• CA-E100 and CA-E100-SV Mariner solar panels
• CA-E200 Odyssey solar panels
• CA-RW1a Xsmall reaction wheel (Same model as RW1)
• CA-SC103 Accelerometer (Stock science, based on Maven)
• CA-ACS 'Startrack' (Startrackers)

-Corrected attachment node orientation on the R8200 RTG
-Improved the torque of the CA-RW3 to 1.7 on all axis
-Moved CA-AACS to the Electronics tech tree node
-Improved CA-AACS to SAS lvl 2
-Fixed CA-SC102 Barometer animation by using DMagicScienceAnimate
-Added several new descriptions to parts that lacked them
-Texture tweaks

EDIT: Known Issues:

- CA-R3900 RTG animation is slightly jumpy
- CA-R3900 RTG node for the magnetometer is oriented straight up, instead of an angle
- CA-A01 antenna has an extra "deploy experiment" button in the right-click menu (From DMagicScienceAnimate)

Looks amazing !!!

[rakol]

Updated the RT2 configs and rebalanced the earlier dishes to fit inline with the newer ones you just released. Again somebody better could probably balance them further but seems to fill some gaps. 

[CobaltWolf]

Every time you post new screencaps I want to say things that would get me a warning from the moderators. Also, on this note:

19 hours ago, akron said:

- CA-A01 antenna has an extra "deploy experiment" button in the right-click menu (From DMagicScienceAnimate)

That *really* isn't how @DMagic intended the plugin to be used, and you'll probably never be able to fix that. Most things in space are only meant to go one way, I don't see why that one antenna is so important that it has to get special treatment, y'know?

[akron]

10 hours ago, rakol said:

Updated the RT2 configs and rebalanced the earlier dishes to fit inline with the newer ones you just released. Again somebody better could probably balance them further but seems to fill some gaps. 

Thank you very much for updating your configs! I tried to learn how to do it but I couldn't figure out how. In the midst of all I have to do, I decided to leave it alone for now, so thanks.

25 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

Every time you post new screencaps I want to say things that would get me a warning from the moderators. Also, on this note:

That *really* isn't how @DMagic intended the plugin to be used, and you'll probably never be able to fix that. Most things in space are only meant to go one way, I don't see why that one antenna is so important that it has to get special treatment, y'know?

Hehe. Thanks for your continuing encouragement, and congratulations on the job!

The ground plane antenna is meant to be unable to be retracted. I could not figure out any way to lock the animation to be one way only. The stock animation module failed to restrict it, so this was just an attempt at something else. I used the plugin to fix the barometer, so I figured why not try. I find it important because the animation and the design does not really work when retracted. I read that using the firespitter animation plugin might be the way to go, but I will move on to science parts before I start adding another dependency.

 

[CobaltWolf]

1 hour ago, akron said:

Hehe. Thanks for your continuing encouragement, and congratulations on the job!

The ground plane antenna is meant to be unable to be retracted. I could not figure out any way to lock the animation to be one way only. The stock animation module failed to restrict it, so this was just an attempt at something else. I used the plugin to fix the barometer, so I figured why not try. I find it important because the animation and the design does not really work when retracted. I read that using the firespitter animation plugin might be the way to go, but I will move on to science parts before I start adding another dependency.

Thank you! My point was there is so many other things that really only should go one way, I don't understand what makes that antenna so important. Or rather, is it worth adding a dependency just for that one thing? I'd hope if you do go that route then you'd pass it on to other things that shouldn't be retracted. Firespitter is supported enough that most heavily modded installs would already have it as a dependency, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. Either way, using DMSA is not the answer.

Also why is normal DMagic listed as a dependency?

[akron]

5 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

Thank you! My point was there is so many other things that really only should go one way, I don't understand what makes that antenna so important. Or rather, is it worth adding a dependency just for that one thing? I'd hope if you do go that route then you'd pass it on to other things that shouldn't be retracted. Firespitter is supported enough that most heavily modded installs would already have it as a dependency, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. Either way, using DMSA is not the answer.

Also why is normal DMagic listed as a dependency?

If I do use another animation plugin, I will definitely use it on other parts. It's just that this antenna's animation playing backwards bothers me just as much as antennas retracting after every transmission in the vanilla game (which is why I removed that option on mine although it means that you can transmit while they are folded).

DMagic is a dependency because I will use a lot of those experiments for parts. Enough of them (Seven, I think) that I did not see me writings scienceDefs for them. It is just the magnetometer for now, but I wanted to get people used to it being a dependency early on.

[CobaltWolf]

2 hours ago, akron said:

If I do use another animation plugin, I will definitely use it on other parts. It's just that this antenna's animation playing backwards bothers me just as much as antennas retracting after every transmission in the vanilla game (which is why I removed that option on mine although it means that you can transmit while they are folded).

DMagic is a dependency because I will use a lot of those experiments for parts. Enough of them (Seven, I think) that I did not see me writings scienceDefs for them. It is just the magnetometer for now, but I wanted to get people used to it being a dependency early on.

You could do what I did in BDB, which is copy them but name them stuff like 'CA_mag' etc, write a simple module manager script to switch them over if DMagic is installed. That way it isn't a hard dependency.

[akron]

3 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

You could do what I did in BDB, which is copy them but name them stuff like 'CA_mag' etc, write a simple module manager script to switch them over if DMagic is installed. That way it isn't a hard dependency.

I was not aware I was allowed to do that. 7 experiments is about half of @DMagic OS though. I can see if it was one or two. I'd hate to "steal the thunder" from his mod, so to speak.

EDIT: I will note that it is required for the science to work in the meantime.

Edited March 28, 2016 by akron

[thunder175]

Does the retractable = false setting in the part config file not work for an antenna? I know there were some solar panel mods that were retractable (that should not have been), and I added the above statement after looking at the stock solar panel configs. After that they didn't give me an option to retract once extended.

Edited March 28, 2016 by thunder175

[akron]

2 minutes ago, thunder175 said:

Does the retractable = false setting in the part config file not work for an antenna? I know there were some solar panel mods that were retractable (that should not have been), and I added the above statement after looking at the stock solar panel configs. After that they didn't give me an option to retract once extended.

It did not work when I tried it, thus the reason for me looking to non-stock options. If I remember the setting was something like inOneWay = true or something like that.

[CobaltWolf]

4 hours ago, akron said:

I was not aware I was allowed to do that. 7 experiments is about half of @DMagic OS though. I can see if it was one or two. I'd hate to "steal the thunder" from his mod, so to speak.

EDIT: I will note that it is required for the science to work in the meantime.

That's why I tagged @DMagic, so that he could weigh in. I see the difference though - BDB used (I believe) one specific sciencedef from him, and one from @frizzank. There is definitely a big difference.

[DMagic]

Using DMagicScienceAnimate strictly for its animation properties probably isn't the best idea, but it shouldn't hurt anything either.

It's too bad no one has taken up, or improved upon StupidChris' Advanced Animator module. ModuleAnimateGeneric has been improved, but there is still a lot of customization that would be nice in animation modules. And now that I think about it, making a custom antenna module might be interesting. Something that would allow for breakable dishes, oneshot (I think that was the config field that used to (or still does?) allow for one way animations) animations, continuous power drain, etc...

As for using Orbital Science as a dependency for its science experiments, that's fine. I wouldn't mind even if someone wanted to just make alternate part models and textures for some of the parts. 

[Kerbal01]

Love these parts. Wish there was engines and tanks for the sats, and Tweakscale .cfgs

and: SpaceDock host?

Edited March 28, 2016 by DarthVader

[CobaltWolf]

6 minutes ago, DarthVader said:

Love these parts. Wish there was engines and tanks for the sats, and Tweakscale .cfgs

and: SpaceDock host?

There are some propulsion things listed, but I do think the list could perhaps see some expansion. He has been focusing on communications, power, and science stuff for now.

And Spacedock would come once he has a polished release.

[akron]

6 hours ago, DMagic said:

Using DMagicScienceAnimate strictly for its animation properties probably isn't the best idea, but it shouldn't hurt anything either.

It's too bad no one has taken up, or improved upon StupidChris' Advanced Animator module. ModuleAnimateGeneric has been improved, but there is still a lot of customization that would be nice in animation modules. And now that I think about it, making a custom antenna module might be interesting. Something that would allow for breakable dishes, oneshot (I think that was the config field that used to (or still does?) allow for one way animations) animations, continuous power drain, etc...

As for using Orbital Science as a dependency for its science experiments, that's fine. I wouldn't mind even if someone wanted to just make alternate part models and textures for some of the parts. 

I wouldn't even know where to begin to put together the code for that , but it would be awesome if the smarter people take a look. I will revisit this antenna animation thing at a later time for sure. I don't think ScienceAnimate will be my solution after all. Thank you for chiming in! I will keep your scienceDefs in your mod and keep it as a pre-req for the science. I don't think there will be major issues if someone doesn't have DMOS installed, the science experiments just won't be there.

3 hours ago, DarthVader said:

Love these parts. Wish there was engines and tanks for the sats, and Tweakscale .cfgs

and: SpaceDock host?

 

3 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

There are some propulsion things listed, but I do think the list could perhaps see some expansion. He has been focusing on communications, power, and science stuff for now.

And Spacedock would come once he has a polished release.

Thank you for clarifying for me, CW! Yes, there are engines planned but I am not working on them just yet. There will be an H-II propulsion module and at least two sizes of some sort of probe service module. One will be based on the Russian Fobos-Grunt mission. Not 100% decided on the other. Maybe an ion engine? I'll know once I start doing further research right before I start working on those.

About tweakscale... I uh... don't use it, nor do I like it (sorry). I think most of my parts would look very strange in a different size than designed. I was also disheartened long ago after many of my crafts were broken because tweakscale randomly resized a part during flight, making my finely crafted ship look all ugly. That being said, if someones writes some configs and wants to share them, I will gladly link them in the OP.

@CobaltWolf is also correct on the Spacedock release. Once I feel the mod is more complete, I will have a release there. It won't be before the science and engine parts are done.

I am now beginning work on science parts. I checked out some books at the library and did a bunch of research (Don't question the madness) so I can at least mildly grasp the nature of the experiments and be able to write some reasonable science defs. Please note that most of these will be Orbital science. Land experiments will be expanded with the landers and rovers pack.

EDIT: CW, I will write those IR scienceDefs on our behalfs

Edited March 29, 2016 by akron

[akron]

I'll drop this quick WIP of the Gamma-Ray Spectroradiometer. Textures are super-WIP and for color direction only. Truss texture credit goes to DMagic's magnetometer, just until I make my own. I decided to use his technique just to try out something a little new that keeps the polys lower. Design derived from 2001 Mars Odyssey

[CobaltWolf]

16 hours ago, akron said:

About tweakscale... I uh... don't use it, nor do I like it (sorry). I think most of my parts would look very strange in a different size than designed. I was also disheartened long ago after many of my crafts were broken because tweakscale randomly resized a part during flight, making my finely crafted ship look all ugly. That being said, if someones writes some configs and wants to share them, I will gladly link them in the OP.

Tweakscale is pretty stable now. The only outstanding issue is that you cannot tweakscale a root part, or it will reset after changing scene. Apart from that I have had very little issues with it.