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

[davidy12]

52 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

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.

Agreed. @akron: I made my own tweak scale for the Magnetometer so my Kioneer 11 could fit inside the Inon. 

[akron]

37 minutes ago, davidy12 said:

Agreed. @akron: I made my own tweak scale for the Magnetometer so my Kioneer 11 could fit inside the Inon. 

Ok. Let me do some testing of the new Tweakscale on my upcoming test of BDB/ProbesPlus/RealPlume Windows install and I'll see what I can do. If you want to share those configs, go ahead.

 

On a separate note, can I get some thoughts about splitting the spectrum imagers into different experiments? Here is the deal, I was going to use @CobaltWolf's InfraRed imager and compliment my own UV and Gamma Ray spectrometers until I remembered that DMOS has a multi-spectral imager. Is it better to split the experiments up or just make my own version of the DMOS multi-imager?

For example, The Voyager science cameras can cover a broad spectra. I can tag it with the DMOS Multi-spec and DMOS Orbital telescope, OR I can tag it with the BDB IR spec, my UV spec, and a visible imager (DMOS telescope or BDB's camera)

Thoughts?

Edited March 29, 2016 by akron

[legoclone09]

I love the mod but the gold foil just doesn't feel very Porkalike. Maybe try the gold from the HECS-II, that seems like it would be a lot better. Everything else is very nice and Porkalike, though.

Edited March 29, 2016 by legoclone09

[akron]

15 hours ago, legoclone09 said:

I love the mod but the gold foil just doesn't feel very Porkalike. Maybe try the gold from the HECS-II, that seems like it would be a lot better. Everything else is very nice and Porkalike, though.

I may do alternate textures, but the stock foil design has some room for improvement. I don't think @Porkjet has done his magic on probe textures or parts yet, but I could be wrong.

I also wanted to mention some interesting bits from the KSP 1.1 changelog:

• Added an option to ModuleAnimateGeneric that allows animations to be disabled after a single execution in flight mode.
• Antenna now retain their state after transmitting (i.e. extended antenna stay extended).
• Science experiments can have optional cooldown timers.

Lastly, I wanna bump this for feedback/discussion:

16 hours ago, akron said:

On a separate note, can I get some thoughts about splitting the spectrum imagers into different experiments? Here is the deal, I was going to use @CobaltWolf's InfraRed imager and compliment my own UV and Gamma Ray spectrometers until I remembered that DMOS has a multi-spectral imager. Is it better to split the experiments up or just make my own version of the DMOS multi-imager?

For example, The Voyager science cameras can cover a broad spectra. I can tag it with the DMOS Multi-spec and DMOS Orbital telescope, OR I can tag it with the BDB IR spec, my UV spec, and a visible imager (DMOS telescope or BDB's camera)

Thoughts?

 

Edited March 30, 2016 by akron

[CobaltWolf]

4 hours ago, akron said:

I may do alternate textures, but the stock foil design has some room for improvement. I don't think @Porkjet has done his magic on probe textures or parts yet, but I could be wrong.

I also wanted to mention some interesting bits from the KSP 1.1 changelog:

• Added an option to ModuleAnimateGeneric that allows animations to be disabled after a single execution in flight mode.
• Antenna now retain their state after transmitting (i.e. extended antenna stay extended).
• Science experiments can have optional cooldown timers.

Lastly, I wanna bump this for feedback/discussion:

All very exciting things. I'll have to look and see what in BDB needs those options. There are a lot of other cool ones, like the ability to make engines gimbal only on certain axis.

I think the gold foil is more of a placeholder than anything at the moment. It really is meant for 1.2's new shaders... Though, the mod is so reliant on it, I think making some normal and spec maps sooner rather than later would be good.

[akron]

update

Lowercase again. I haven't had much to show which is why it's been a little quiet over here. Also, I figured the thread wouldn't get much attention since experimental 1.1 is out.

Anyway, I took the time to start writing those ScienceDefs and it has been really hard, because I don't want to just make stuff up to put there. I have done (as always) a lot of research into the experiments and got probably 60% of them done, including some for the IR experiments in BDB! 

I am a little disappointed in the lack of feedback when I asked, but I guess the 1.1 release just made it bad timing . I decided that I will edit the DMOS Multispectral experiment via MM configs to greatly reduce its science gain. The idea will be that the multi-spec scanner will be a "jack of all trades, master of none" kind of experiment; and would be used mostly for biome scans with bonus science. For full Science you'd want to take the dedicated IR or UV spectrometer, or both. After this decision, I felt I had new direction so I continued modeling and moved on to Torekka's science boom (Voyager). This will be a full-featured scanner and will have 3 experiments from its visual cameras, IR and UV spectrometer.

Here be the WIP. Textures are temp, etc:

Edited April 1, 2016 by akron

[CobaltWolf]

10 hours ago, akron said:

Here be the WIP. Textures are temp, etc:

Berry cool. I never really understood how big Voyager was until I had to try and fit yours in a fairing...

[davidy12]

10 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

Berry cool. I never really understood how big Voyager was until I had to try and fit yours in a fairing...

K(P)ioneer 11, I had to tweak scale it's magnetometer so I could fit it in the Inon.

Edited April 1, 2016 by davidy12

[akron]

2 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

Berry cool. I never really understood how big Voyager was until I had to try and fit yours in a fairing...

2 hours ago, davidy12 said:

K(P)ioneer 11, I had to tweak scale it's magnetometer so I could fit it in the Inon.

Those probes were pretty large. Galileo also, its diameter filled most of the shuttle's cargo bay. It's mostly the dishes, although Pioneers MAG was not small either. I think my scale worked out that you can launch Quetzal on a 1.5m or a 1.875m stack. Torekka might fit in 1.875m, but I think you'll need a 2.5m stack.

That magnetometer is indeed supposed to extend out that much, did it look ok with tweakscale?

 

Edited April 1, 2016 by akron

[davidy12]

9 minutes ago, akron said:

Those probes were pretty large. Galileo also, its diameter filled most of the shuttle's cargo bay. It's mostly the dishes, although Pioneers MAG was not small either. I think my scale worked out that you can launch Quetzal on a 1.5m or a 1.875m stack. Torekka might fit in 1.875m, but I think you'll need a 2.5m stack.

That magnetometer is indeed supposed to extend out that much, did it look ok with tweakscale?

 

LOOKED AWESOME!!!

[CobaltWolf]

2 hours ago, akron said:

Torekka might fit in 1.875m, but I think you'll need a 2.5m stack.

That magnetometer is indeed supposed to extend out that much, did it look ok with tweakscale?

Well I think Titan had a 4m fairing.

[akron]

5 hours ago, CobaltWolf said:

Well I think Titan had a 4m fairing.

Voyagers were launched on the last two Titan IIIE ever built, TC-6 and TC-7. And your estimate is super close! The Centaur stage was inside a 4.3m fairing. I can't figure out what Pioneer's fairing size was, but it was launched on a Atlas Centaur SLV-3C. It does not look like it had a wide fairing which I think means it was 3.02m in diameter,

I am really bad at converting stuff to KSP scale. I made Torekka first, which is 0.625m on top and 1.25m on the bottom. Everything I made is kinda just scaled to Torekka, to be honest.

EDIT: I use Historic spacecraft images for scale too:

Edited April 2, 2016 by akron

[TimothyC]

Just now, akron said:

Voyagers were launched on the last two Atlas IIIE ever built, TC-6 and TC-7. And your estimate is super close!

I think you have a typo there as the Voyager probes went up on Titan. As for Atlas-Centaur, There never was a hammerhead fairing for that production line, meaning the 10 foot fairing was it.

[akron]

1 minute ago, TimothyC said:

I think you have a typo there as the Voyager probes went up on Titan. As for Atlas-Centaur, There never was a hammerhead fairing for that production line, meaning the 10 foot fairing was it.

You're right. I confused the two in my post 

[komodo]

Cassini is kinda a tank, isn't it? (!)

im going to try to get some play time in on 1.0.5 tonight, I'll try to focus on probes if possible. (These in particular, I mean. ). I need to trim the mod trees a bit first, things are getting a bit over grown

[Kerbal01]

What's next? 

Documentation for Tweakscale is lacking, else id write a config for these parts.

[akron]

1 hour ago, DarthVader said:

What's next? 

Documentation for Tweakscale is lacking, else id write a config for these parts.

Right now I am working on the new science experiments, trying to finish models to get them in-game and finishing textures. The Gamma Ray and the Torekka science boom are up first, followed by an independent IR spec, a UV spec, and the Ionization/Electrostatic experiment. It has been a little slow this week... I've been wanting to test in KSP 1.1 as well so I've been kinda dragging my feet.

[akron]

Update

The Gamma Ray spectrometer and Torekka's (Voyager) science boom are in-game! There were a lot of issues exporting the GRS animation. The original technique I used to emulate the real one worked fine in Maya but Unity wasn't having it. I had to redesign the whole structure and use a different animation method. Voyager's boom was easy to animate by comparison and did not give me much trouble except for the texture. I chose to keep it plain but it may be a little lacking. They both might still need a little bit of tweaking plus in-game balancing.

I was also testing the Science configs and some of my descriptions are not displaying so I will have to go back and look at the conditions. I am not sure how to add variety without writing a tons of them. I may delete the distinction between and high and low orbit and let the text display on both. Not sure, still deciding... 

As I mentioned before, the individual UV and IR specs are up next. Followed by the lon/electric science, solar wind science, rpws and maybe a couple of utility parts.

Feedback welcome!

EDIT: Oh! And ProbesPlus! has a fancy new logo. Let me know what you think

Edited April 4, 2016 by akron

[CobaltWolf]

4 hours ago, akron said:

Update

The Gamma Ray spectrometer and Torekka's (Voyager) science boom are in-game! There were a lot of issues exporting the GRS animation. The original technique I used to emulate the real one worked fine in Maya but Unity wasn't having it. I had to redesign the whole structure and use a different animation method. Voyager's boom was easy to animate by comparison and did not give me much trouble except for the texture. I chose to keep it plain but it may be a little lacking. They both might still need a little bit of tweaking plus in-game balancing.

I was also testing the Science configs and some of my descriptions are not displaying so I will have to go back and look at the conditions. I am not sure how to add variety without writing a tons of them. I may delete the distinction between and high and low orbit and let the text display on both. Not sure, still deciding... 

As I mentioned before, the individual UV and IR specs are up next. Followed by the lon/electric science, solar wind science, rpws and maybe a couple of utility parts.

Feedback welcome!

EDIT: Oh! And ProbesPlus! has a fancy new logo. Let me know what you think

I like the new logo. What was so hard about the animation for GRS? Looks like you could just scale up the truss segment on the Z axis (how most things extend in KSP, including the DMagic boom and many of my parts) while a wrapper object rotates.

I like the new logo, it looks very nice and clean.

[akron]

32 minutes ago, CobaltWolf said:

I like the new logo. What was so hard about the animation for GRS? Looks like you could just scale up the truss segment on the Z axis (how most things extend in KSP, including the DMagic boom and many of my parts) while a wrapper object rotates.

I like the new logo, it looks very nice and clean.

Thanks!

The GRS animation was based on the real truss which is compressed in a twist-like motion. My animation had one end of the truss rotating while the other end remained stationary. The truss mesh would never export correctly (even though the rest did). Baking the "advanced" animation through Maya's menu beforehand exported the truss mesh fine, but the animation did not play in Unity (it did in Maya). It works fine now, but the whole truss mesh rotates together. If I can figure out an easy way to do a GIF, I'll start doing those. I remember it being a major pain in the rear to do the GIF for my RTG way back then.

[MainSailor]

On 4/1/2016 at 2:02 PM, CobaltWolf said:

Berry cool. I never really understood how big Voyager was until I had to try and fit yours in a fairing...

Me neither, until I saw this photo:

[MainSailor]

What's next? 

Documentation for Tweakscale is lacking, else id write a config for these parts.

There's two ways of doing it. You can define the default scale, and if it's common, TweakScale will automatically provide the steps (i.e, if the part is 2.5m, it will automatically provide 1.25m, and 5m steps.); or you can define the range of scales as percentages of the original size. The second is useful for non-stacking (surface attach parts.) The first is useful for stackable items like decouplers, fuel tanks, etc.

So the config for the second one would look like:

SCALETYPE
{
    name = TweakScale
    freeScale = false
    scaleFactors = 0.25, 0.35, 0.5, 0.7, 1.0, 1.4, 2.0, 2.8, 4.0
    scaleNames = 25%, 35%, 50%, 70%, 100%, 140%, 200%, 280%, 400%
    defaultScale = 1.0
}

You could add patches by MM by;

@PART[PartNameHere]!MODULE[TweakScale]
{
     MODULE
    {
        name = TweakScale
        type = TweakScale
        defaultScale = 1
    }
}

By default, TweakScale doesn't modify things that can't easily be quantified (science altitude/range or points) only things that are numerically defined in a cfg (battery charge, fuel levels, reaction wheel force, etc.)

[akron]

1 hour ago, MainSailor said:

There's two ways of doing it. You can define the default scale, and if it's common, TweakScale will automatically provide the steps (i.e, if the part is 2.5m, it will automatically provide 1.25m, and 5m steps.); or you can define the range of scales as percentages of the original size. The second is useful for non-stacking (surface attach parts.) The first is useful for stackable items like decouplers, fuel tanks, etc.

By default, TweakScale doesn't modify things that can't easily be quantified (science altitude/range or points) only things that are numerically defined in a cfg (battery charge, fuel levels, reaction wheel force, etc.)

Good info for if I ever get around to doing Tweakscale. I am still a little uncertain about it. It's likely some else will get to it before me

[CobaltWolf]

1 hour ago, akron said:

Thanks!

The GRS animation was based on the real truss which is compressed in a twist-like motion. My animation had one end of the truss rotating while the other end remained stationary. The truss mesh would never export correctly (even though the rest did). Baking the "advanced" animation through Maya's menu beforehand exported the truss mesh fine, but the animation did not play in Unity (it did in Maya). It works fine now, but the whole truss mesh rotates together. If I can figure out an easy way to do a GIF, I'll start doing those. I remember it being a major pain in the rear to do the GIF for my RTG way back then.

Hrmm, I think you're overcomplicating things a bit. Stick to basic animation stuff, just keying the translate / rotation / scale and using empties in the hierarchy.

[akron]

Just now, CobaltWolf said:

Hrmm, I think you're overcomplicating things a bit. Stick to basic animation stuff, just keying the translate / rotation / scale and using empties in the hierarchy.

But it looks so pretty... 

I really don't mind at all. I've learned a whole lot in the process, and the result is usually really awesome. I don't know, I can't help it, but I do see your point.